Letter From Home

by Carolyn Hart

  Gretchen pressed her fingers against her cheeks, stared at the typewriter.

  The wooden floor creaked. Mr. Dennis ambled toward her desk. He carried a chipped blue pottery plate. He stopped beside Gretchen, stood with his back to Ralph Cooley. “Glazed and cake and some long johns with caramel icing.”

  Gretchen took a long john. Her mug was half full of coffee. Mr. Dennis made the coffee fresh every morning from a mixture of coffee and chicory. She’d puckered her mouth when she first tasted the strong brew. Now she loved it. She hadn’t told Grandmother she’d started drinking coffee.

  The minute hand on the old wall clock made a distinct click when it reached the hour. She heard it now and looked up, her face taut. She’d been working all morning and she didn’t have anything. “Mr. Dennis, I don’t have the story on Mrs. Tatum.”

  Cooley gave a rattly cough. “. . . and Durwood’s showing the strain, too. He’s got to get this one solved or he might as well forget about running for the legislature. . . .”

  Mr. Dennis poked at a cinnamon-sugared doughnut. “This looks good.” He took a bite. Pink sugar wavered in a thin line above his lips. He gave her a casual smile, like he was talking about the weather. “You’ll do fine. Keep it simple. Tell it the way it happened.”

  Gretchen picked up her mug. The bitter coffee jolted her. Keep it simple. . . . She put down the mug. Keep it simple. . . . She lifted her hands, began to type, a word, another, more, then faster and faster:

  Who was Faye Tatum?

  Five people described her for the Gazette. Each knew her in a different way. Lucille Winters worked with Faye at Jessop’s Five and Dime. Jim Dan Pulliam is an aspiring artist whom Faye encouraged. Betty Steele took classes from Faye. Lou Hopper owns the Blue Light where Faye loved to dance. Martha Crane lived next door to Faye.

  Mrs. Winters has big dark eyes and a smooth pompadour. She talks fast and has a quick laugh, but sometimes as she remembered she held a handkerchief to her eyes. She has worked at Jessop’s since she graduated from high school in 1930. “Faye loved to sell jewelry. I never knew anybody who liked pretty things better than Faye. She always dressed to the nines, even when she had to redo clothes from before the war. She’d add a crocheted collar or new piping. And hats! She made one with red felt and spangles for our Christmas party. Most of all, she loved to dance. People ought to know that’s why she went to the Blue Light. Whenever she told me about somebody she met there, she talked about how they could dance. That was all. She didn’t take anybody home with her. I know that’s so because she would have told me. She told me a lot of things that were private, not things you’d tell just anybody. She told me how much she loved Clyde, that he was the only man she’d ever cared about and how she prayed for him, that he’d come home safe and not have to go overseas. When she got word he was going to be home on furlough before his unit shipped out, she cried. She was so afraid he’d get killed. She said having him home was like heaven. There’s been all this talk about Faye, that somebody said they’d seen a man going to her house late at night, well, I want to tell everybody that’s a lie. Faye never thought about any man but Clyde. All she wanted was for the war to end and him to come home.”

  Jim Dan Pulliam works at Purdy’s Garage. Tall, slender, quick moving, he speaks softly. His hands are stained with grease and dirt. He is seventeen and he is an artist. “In the ninth grade, I got in a fight with these guys who made fun of me because I liked art class. I broke this one guy’s arm. Barb Tatum told her mom. She came to my house.” His smoky blue eyes moved away to gaze at the head-high sunflowers pushing against the wire fence near the garage. “Not a house really. A trailer over in Burn’s Flat.” His eyes were defiant. “But she came and you would have thought I lived on Hickory Hill. She looked at my drawings. Some of them were charcoal on grocery sacks. She told me people don’t understand about capturing light and color. She said an artist sees the pulse of life. That’s what she called it, the pulse of life. That was the first time I understood what I was doing and why it made me feel right.” He smoothed his fingers on a shiny wrench. “Sometimes I feel right. Lots of times I get mad and throw the painting away. Because it’s not good enough. Mrs. Tatum told me I had to keep on painting, no matter if people laughed. I must never quit, not even if they hated me. If I gave up, I’d shrivel away like corn left in the field. I’ve got a painting I’ve been working on this summer. I was going to show it to her. The sun on the water at Hunter Lake . . .”

  Water beaded the bright, green ferns on Betty Steele’s screened-in porch. Despite the Oklahoma wind, there was no dust on the freshly painted swing. The cushions on the wicker chairs have been recently re-covered. Mrs. Fletcher is a Home Economics teacher. Her brown pageboy glistened in the afternoon sunlight. She clapped her hands together, her face eager. “Faye loved painting. I know I’m not any good, but I always wanted to paint and she had classes at the store on Saturdays for people like me who work. I learned a lot about teaching from her even though she never even went to college. But when she looked, she really saw what was there. People. Beauty. She’d be halfway through a class and all of a sudden, she’d dart across the room and point at somebody and she’d cry, ‘Look at the way the sun’s coming through the window. If we could paint Mrs. Harris in the sunlight, wouldn’t that be beautiful, class?’ And Mrs. Harris, now I’m just using a name because I don’t want to embarrass anybody, but she might be a plain woman with thick glasses and a tired face, but Faye would make us see the beauty, the glow in her eyes, the delicate line of her jaw, the life. Oh, I tell you, Faye was a teacher who had magic. You ask people who took her classes, they’ll tell you. Most of them never heard of Rembrandt and couldn’t draw a lick, but if they opened their hearts even a little, they took something from Faye’s class that they never forgot. I was so sorry when she had to give up most of those classes to work full time at Jessop’s. It was a loss to everybody in town who loved art. I know she kept on teaching a few, like Jim Dan. . . .”

  Lou Hopper said she doesn’t put up with any nonsense at the Blue Light. A tall redhead, she doesn’t smile and her voice is gruff. “Lots of people in town don’t like beer joints, but I run a clean place and there’s no trouble here. People can drink beer, dance, eat ribs or a hamburger when we’ve got meat, cheese and rye and chips when we don’t. Since the war started, we’re full every night. Music helps people forget their troubles. I hardly ever spoke to Faye Tatum, but I knew her because she was a regular. She was the best dancer I ever saw. She’d dance with anybody, old, young, as long as they kept their hands to themselves and danced like there was nothing left in the world but the music. You could take one look at her on the dance floor—and that’s where she spent the whole evening, never sitting in a booth or at the bar—and know she was here for the music, the beat, the sound, the rhythm. God, she could dance. There was a soldier boy from Louisiana—he’s gone now, shipped out to the Pacific—and he and Faye used to jitterbug. Everybody else would stop and make a big circle and when the music ended, they’d shout and clap. And I can tell you, she came by herself and she left by herself. She was never off in a corner with a man.” Mrs. Hopper raised a thick dark eyebrow. “A lot of people who come here are lonely. They’re looking for love. You can always tell. But not Faye. All she wanted to do was dance. Now, I hardly ever spoke to her but I remember once she said, ‘When I dance, I’m not afraid.’” Mrs. Hopper lit a cigarette, drew a deep lungful. “I told her, ‘Honey, I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but I’m glad you got the music.’”

  Martha Crane has lived on Archer Street for thirty-three years. Her husband, William, managed the Hamilton paint store for forty years until his death in 1935. Mrs. Crane’s house shines with care, the window curtains crisp, the floor bright with polish, the slipcovers freshly laundered and ironed. Family pictures are everywhere, on the mantel, the bookcases, the tables. A portrait of her son, George, in his captain’s uniform, is in a place of honor on the mantel. “My husband liked Clyde. Clyde helped William
when we had trouble with the car. Clyde could almost always get a car to start, but he wasn’t much to keep things up around the house and Faye was too busy with Barb and her painting to keep after him. She didn’t spend time cooking or cleaning, but she loved to play with Barb. I remember when Barb was about five, she and Faye used to laugh and giggle and make mud pies, and they’d poke sprigs of grass on top and Faye would say, ‘Pass the parsley,’ and she and Barb would just die laughing. I never could see what was so funny, but they laughed and laughed. I guess Faye really didn’t much care how the house looked or the yard. She was crazy about the wildflowers, always said God made the prettiest flowers so why not just enjoy them. There was Indian paintbrush in the field behind their house. But for a woman who always had daubs of paint on her face and her clothes, you’d think she would have wanted their house to look nice. It needed painting a long time before Clyde got drafted. And that broken-down clothesline was just a disgrace. Sometimes she strung the wash on my fence and if that didn’t look tacky! But I’m glad now I never said a thing about it. Sometimes she’d set up an easel underneath the oak tree, the big one that spreads shade so far there isn’t a scrap of grass beneath it. I used to go hang out my wash on those days and take my time about it so I could watch her paint. There was something—oh, I don’t know how to say it, but it was exciting to see her, her hair swept up behind a bandana and splashes of paint on her old blue smock and her face streaked like an Indian on the warpath. It was like she was more alive than anybody. You know how you can see a crow in the sunlight, eyes bright as a new penny, feathers shiny as polished coal? That crow—just for a minute you look and you see him living, just like you are, and the whole world seems bursting with life, you and the crow and a big old sunflower and the cicadas. That’s what it was like to watch Faye paint.”

  Faye Tatum still loves and laughs and paints and dances in the memories of those who knew her.

  Gretchen read over the copy, corrected typos, put her name and a slug—Memories—in the upper left-hand corner. She marked the page numbers in the upper right. She pasted the sheets together. When she was done, she sat at her desk, holding the story. The story ran twenty-eight inches, the longest she’d ever written. Was it stupid? Would Mr. Dennis wonder why he’d ever hired her? Maybe she should crumple up the copy paper, throw the story in the wastebasket, walk out into the oven-hot noon, go over to the café, and scrub and clean and forget about—

  The floor creaked. A shadow fell across her desk. “Let me see, Gretchen.” Mr. Dennis reached down, took the copy.

  He always read fast. Yet the minutes—it couldn’t have taken more than two or three—seemed never to end. When he was done, he nodded and turned away, carrying the pages. He walked back toward his desk, then said over his shoulder, as if it weren’t a matter of importance, “Yeah, Gretchen. I’m sending it out on the wire. With your byline.”

  She sat very still. . . . On the wire . . . her story would go out on the wire. . . .

  GRETCHEN SLIPPED ON her dull blue wool crepe dress. It was her best winter dress and the pleated skirt felt heavy as a blanket. She’d be hot as blazes, but none of her summer church clothes were dark. She had one pair of pumps for summer, white, and one for winter, dark blue. Should she wear the winter shoes? She shrugged, stepped into the dark shoes. She popped on a navy straw hat. She’d carefully taken off a cluster of yellow feathers. Why did people wear dark clothes to a funeral? To show they were unhappy? Gretchen wasn’t sure. But that’s what everybody did. Funny. Just like ants swarming around an anthill. Was she like an ant? Doing what everybody else did because that was all she knew? She tucked the question in her mind to think about.

  Grandmother was waiting in the living room, wearing her best navy silk dress and a blue straw hat. Her white-blond hair was freshly braided in a coronet. Usually, when they were on their way to church, her blue eyes would be shining with eagerness, her plump cheeks pink in anticipation. Today she looked old, her face drawn and pale, her shoulders bent. She held a blue pottery bowl covered with wax paper. “I have made a fruit salad. Barb and her aunt are at the house so I thought we’d take it there.” Her round face creased. “I don’t know if people will come to the house after the funeral. . . .” Her purse and gloves lay on the table by the front door.

  Gretchen reached out for the bowl. Murder changed everything. Murder had turned Faye Tatum from a woman eyed with suspicion because she was an artist into a bad person. At least that seemed to be how Reverend Byars saw Faye. How many people in town felt the same way? Grandmother had made the salad because that was what she always did when someone died. She fixed food and took it to a bereaved family and after the funeral everyone gathered at the house and ate and talked and laughed and cried. But today, nothing was familiar, not even sun-baked Archer Street with two unfamiliar cars parked in the rutted drive of the Tatum house. A mud-streaked green coupe was nosed in close to a pile of logs. Behind it, a shiny black sedan gleamed with fresh wax.

  Blazing heat pressed against them. Every patch of shadow from the thick-leafed oaks was a welcome respite, a fractional lessening of the heat’s burden. Gretchen held the bowl in one hand, braced Grandmother’s elbow with the other. Grandmother moved slowly, as if each step took effort. When they left the Tatum house, it would be three blocks more to the funeral home. Could Grandmother walk all that way? The thought wiggled in Gretchen’s mind, dark and ugly as a cottonmouth slithering through red-tinted lake water. Fear for Grandmother made Gretchen feel cold, despite the waves of baked air that rolled against her like hot drafts pulsing from a grass fire. Grandmother had always stepped with dignity, but she had been able to walk anywhere she wanted, even the two miles to Cousin Hilda’s farm. Today, her gait was leaden, like an old, old woman’s.

  The Tatums’ rusted gate still hung from its hinge. The unkempt yard seemed weedier than ever, the house shabbier. The front door was open. Gretchen moved ahead of Grandmother, lifted one hand. Before she could knock, the screen door swung out.

  Barb, her face white as a clown’s greasepaint, held the screen. She, too, wore a dark dress and hat, held gloves tightly in one hand. She didn’t say a word. Red-rimmed eyes, glazed with misery, stared emptily. Her features looked like they’d been chopped from pond ice, hard, gray, rigid.

  Gretchen stepped inside even though she wanted to turn and run, leave behind Barb’s pain, flee from this square room with its awful freight of memory.

  Grandmother climbed the steps, breathing heavily. She came inside, folded Barb in her arms, held her tight.

  Footsteps clipped on the hardwood floor. “Come in. I’m Darla Murray, Faye’s sister. Barb, mind your manners, introduce our guests.” Darla Murray’s voice was sharp. Her face was a heavier version of Faye’s, the artist’s elegant bone structure blurred by age. She, too, might have been beautiful, but her green eyes were hard and cold. Tiny, deep, dissatisfied lines fissured her face, bracketed tight lips.

  Grandmother patted Barb once more. “Mrs. Murray, we are neighbors to Faye and Clyde.” She spoke his name with a trace of defiance. “This is my granddaughter, Gretchen. She has brought the salad.”

  Mrs. Murray waved a thick hand, the nails a bright red. “Oh, you can put it in the kitchen. It’s very nice of you.” There was no thanks in her tone. “I don’t know whether we’ll need anything. Some people brought dishes, but I’ve got to get on the road as soon as the burial’s done.” She glared at Barb. “And you have to get your things ready to go to the preacher’s house. I can’t stay more than a few minutes after everything’s done so if you don’t want to be here”—she waved her hand at the living room—“by yourself, you’re going to have to move fast. One of us has to lock this place up.” Her cold eyes scanned the living room. It was neat, no magazines or Coke bottle or crackers scattered about. Someone had cleaned and straightened, the rug smooth without a ripple. There was nothing left to remind of the careless easy lives spent here or the painful death.

  Barb’s stricken face turned toward Gretc
hen. “I’ll take the salad.” She reached out, grabbed the bowl, limped toward the kitchen.

  Mrs. Steele, her sweet face solemn, bent past Lucille Winters’s big dark pompadour, to flutter her fingers in greeting. “Lotte, Gretchen.” There was an old man Gretchen didn’t know in one corner talking to Mrs. Crane, who held a handkerchief tight in her hands and dabbed at her eyes, but the living room didn’t hold the usual big gathering of family and friends after a death.

  Grandmother moved past Mrs. Murray. Gretchen sped toward the kitchen. She didn’t want to think that Grandmother was standing right now where Faye Tatum’s body had lain.

  Barb stood in the doorway to the back porch, slumped against the door frame, facing the welter of canvases and the easel with the unfinished painting.

  “Barb,” Gretchen called softly.

  Barb turned as if her body ached. She looked at Gretchen dully, her face heavy with sadness and despair. “Daddy didn’t come home. They’re going to bury Mama and he isn’t here. Aunt Darla said”—she took a deep breath and now her shoulders shook—“what could Mama expect, no man would put up—” She buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God, I wish I was dead. That’s what Daddy thought. That’s what he thought and . . .”

  Gretchen fought tears as she hurried toward Barb.

  A crisp hand clap sounded from the doorway.

  Barb’s head jerked up. Her eyes blazed.

  “Time to go.” Barb’s aunt adjusted her hat, dropped down a short veil. “Have you got your gloves? Come on, girl.”

  Barb started across the kitchen, then whirled and limped back to the porch.

  Mrs. Murray clapped her hands on her broad hips. “What do you think—”

  Barb came through the door, clutching a paintbrush. She held it tight to her body.