The Morning and the Evening (8 page)

When it came full dark, he lit the candle and went indoors. He took off his clothes tonight and lay flat with a sheet up over him when the candle was out.

Usually he went to sleep quickly. Tonight he lay awake. He looked at his clothes lying in a heap on the floor in the moonlight and in the quiet and dark gradually understood, as much as he could, that no one was going to stay here again. He was completely alone.

He lay awake as the night and its silence deepened. He had always known silence, but suddenly he was afraid of it. He sat up, startled, and with one terrified, but reassuring cry, called out at the top of his lungs, telling them all, telling everybody, the one thing in the world he did know fully: that as deep as his own silence was, it was nowhere near so deep as hers.

Chapter Four

Ruth Edna stood on the porch and watched Jake go down the path to the gate. He could manage her latch and lifted it, passed out to the exact center of the road and tugging up the straps of his overalls, went down the road and out of sight. A rooster ran from the yard after him, pecking frantically as if he had dropped something.

Ruth Edna glanced upward at clouds sun-tinged and bright as gold, banked in a sky that would have nothing to do with rain. She turned back to the breezeway, reminding herself next time to see about Jake's straps. Off the breezeway's other end was the garden where only weeds flourished in the dry ground, and goldenrod, the color of mustard, rose in graceful spikes taller than the corn.

As she went along the breezeway, Cotter called from his room, where he sat rocking, “What'd he want?”

Otherwise she would not have stopped. “Sewing,” she said. She held up denim work shirts so worn they were almost white. Sleeves tangled in various ways held them together and suddenly, realizing Jake had been trying to make a bundle, she held them close. Then she smelled sweat, and more. The henhouse, she thought and knew she would wash the shirts too.

Cotter said, “All you do is sew for him. Why don't you sew for yourself. That dress you got on has a rip clear down the side.”

“You tend to your own business. I'll tend to mine.” Ruth Edna flung across the breezeway to her own room.

Large and dark, it served them as a dining room as well. All the furniture in the house had been her mother's, except a cedar chest Ruth Edna had managed to buy. Now she crossed over to it and lifted the lid. She put the shirts inside. On top lay a doll. When Ruth Edna took her out, her eyes, blue as blueing, flew open and stared. Ruth Edna kissed her mouth, a tea rose, pink and perfect. She ran her finger inside little curls coiled like springs and admired again the tiny patent-leather slippers; a thin strap across the instep buttoned onto a white pearl button no bigger than a raindrop. No one knew Ruth Edna had the doll, and she put her away again carefully. She put out a finger and closed her eyes. Not to would be like burying someone alive.

Afterward, she touched beneath her armpits with bath powder, changed her dress and was ready to go uptown when she heard a chirpy little voice down the breezeway: “Yoo-hoo. Ruth Ed—na!”

“In here,” she called, knowing Hattie knew it. She pretended to look so she could peer into all the rooms.

When she had come in, Hattie stood transfixed. “Ruth Edna! Isn't that new?” Her eyes darted quickly about the room, at the unwashed dishes, at the unmade bed, at the scraps of Ruth Edna's dress still on the floor. To her surprise, she thought the kitchen floor had been mopped; then she saw it was just that something had been spilled—the sponge used to dab it up lay nearby.

Ruth Edna turned before the mirror. “It's not quite finished. The hem's just basted.”

“I see.” Hattie saw the thread coming out. “You going uptown? I am.”

“Yes. Let's go.”

They entered the breezeway and faced across an old apple orchard where the morning sun had just come to rest upon the tops of the squat, gnarled trees. Between the dark glistening leaves the apples hung light green, knotty and hard, and as sweet as they were ever going to get.

Looking about, Ruth Edna said, “I declare, it's going to be hot. I best get a towel.”

She returned to the house, and Hattie crept down the breezeway. She had just gotten to Cotter's room when Ruth Edna came out another door and spoke right behind her: “He's there.”

“Ruth Edna—!” Hattie's little hands flew to her sparse breasts. Then breathless, she turned and bobbed up and down before Cotter's screen door trying to see inside his room. “Why! Is that you, Brother Cotter?”

“Oh, stop all that smirking up your face. He can't see out through that screen any better'n you can see in,” Ruth Edna said.

“Why, Ruth Edna …” Hattie said.

“Don't pay no mind to her, Miss Hattie,” Cotter said. “She ain't off right in the morning till she's had at somebody.”

“Are we going uptown or not?” Ruth Edna said.

“Who's waiting for you there?” Cotter said. “Gary Cooper?”

“Now, you two,” Hattie said. She was going to say goodbye, but suddenly with the condition Cotter was in, it seemed too final. She cried instead, “Keep alive …!” intending it to be cheery. Then realizing, she sank into herself horrified and fled the yard like a stray being chunked at.

Ruth Edna caught up with her at the gate. “I declare to my soul, Hattie McGaha. I always have thought your head was stuffed with fruitcake. Now I know it.”

She wrapped her arms in the towel and folded them across her breasts, mummylike. She went ahead, and Hattie came along behind, a black umbrella opened over her head large as a parachute, covering her entirely except for her tottery legs beneath going along like a pair of old scissors, one barely slipping by the other.

From the wooden walk Ruth Edna could see their shadows chasing each other on the road below, wavery as water images. If Hattie hadn't carried that black mortuary-looking umbrella, they could have walked side by side instead of single file like this, looking like fools, she thought. She turned around and looked at Hattie hurrying along half out from under the umbrella, vulnerable as a turtle out of its shell, a smudge in the middle of her forehead. From Cotter's screen, she'd bet. She called, “Hattie, you got black soot all over your face.”

“Oh, Ruth Edna!” Hattie cried; her mind jumped backward to who all they had seen, walking uptown. She lowered the umbrella and stood with the handle crooked over her arm like a parrot's beak, scrubbing at her face with a Kleenex till it fell into shreds.

Exasperated, Ruth Edna said, “Oh come on. You're not gettin' married today.” She went ahead, thinking of a similar incident that happened once in a Memphis department store. She had a prissy little salesgirl who was annoyed because Ruth Edna didn't make up her mind. Finally she told the girl, “Honey, you got a big black smudge in the middle of your forehead.”

“It's Ash Wednesday,” the girl said.

That got the better of Ruth Edna. She slammed down the thread she had selected and left the store, boycotted it even through a sale on cotton dresses. Then, regretfully, she told Cotter the story.

“Stupid,” he said. “That's something got to do with Catholics, not Lowenstein's Department Store.”

Ruth Edna could remember now how she had stood, her mouth fallen open, wishing she could kick herself. Anybody in the world but a fool like her would have known that was some kind of foolishness nobody but a Catholic could think up.

“Hattie, you ever heard of Ash Wednesday?” she called.

“Ash
what!
” Hattie called, running forward.

“Oh, nothing,” Ruth Edna said, satisfied.

When they entered Miss Loma's, Sadie Louise Murphy jumped from behind the door, like a scare for Halloween, and cried, “George Edwards is dead!”

“Oh my!” Hattie said.

“How'd that happen?” Ruth Edna said.

“He went out to the barn milking, and when he didn't come in, his wife went out and found him. He never even got started. The pail was dry as a bone and the cow bellowing. He'd just fallen over. Heart, they reckon.”

“Did he fall in hay?” Hattie said. “I mean, not in a cow plop, did he?
Ooo
.”

“
Hat
—tie!” everybody said.

“Hattie, your head's stuffed just with nuts out of the fruitcake,” Ruth Edna said, almost bitter.

She went off to the back of the store where the Coke machine was. Miss Loma was stacking cans of creamed corn and said, “Ruth Edna, you got Jake's sewing again this week?”

Ruth Edna dropped a dime in the machine. “Yes, why?”

“I just think it's my turn, is all,” Miss Loma said, licking back a label. “But it seems like Jake hasn't learned to take it to nobody but you.”

“That's because I've done it so much these past two months. I've got more time, not having a husband or kids or grandchildren like most folks, you know.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and with a feeling of relief she let them stay; they might well be from drinking the fizzy cola too fast.

“Whew, I do,” Miss Loma said. “It seems like I got to pee-pee on the run in the mornings to get all done in a day I got to do.”

At that moment, from the front of the store, someone called, “We just seen Jake coming out of your house, Ruth Edna, when we come by.”

“Jake?” Ruth Edna said. “I wonder why?”

“'Cause you got his sewing, I reckon,” Miss Loma said.

“But he just brought it a while ago. I couldn't have done it yet.”

“Well, he don't know that. Jake don't know the morning from the evening.”

“I reckon he knows that much,” Ruth Edna said. She put her empty bottle into the rack like a honeycomb.

At the front of the store, Hattie, white as a sheet, stood and called, “Ruth Edna, I got to go.”

“Go?” Ruth Edna came forward. “We just got here.”

“I know, but I got to go. Listen, I'm in trouble. Bad trouble.”

“Trouble?” everybody echoed, crowding around.

“I told you my bantam's sick. I've got the feeling something terrible has happened to him.”

Without looking at one another, everyone agreed she ought to go home then. “Lord help us,” Ruth Edna said, feeling helpless, and decided she might as well go too. She followed Hattie out of the store and said, “How do,” generally to the men sitting on the porch: the Veazey brothers, Wilroy and several others she didn't look at long enough to recognize.

“How do, Miss Ruth Edna,” they said in return, lifting hats. Having collected their mail on the way home to noon dinners, they had stopped to visit a while on Miss Loma's porch, and the air was sour with the smell of their sweat, soaked in black circles beneath their arms and in patches on their backs, except on Wilroy, who worked for a coal, ice and ginning company in Senatobia and wore a suit every day. The Veazeys had just come from their bottomland near where the government-built dam was going up. The possibilities of that, Lord! It was said the dam would run over into a spillway where there would be boating and fishing, swimming even! No one had ever dreamed of anything like that near Marigold. Ed Veazey squinted against the blue cigarette smoke in the air heavy as fog, hoisted his pants leg and applied coal oil Miss Loma had given him to his chigger bites. Blushing, Ruth Edna looked away from his hairy white legs; she had always thought Cotter the only one hiding such a sight under pants legs. Tell her men didn't have all the advantages in this world.

Hattie hurried away down the walk, the umbrella bobbing along like a cork floating, and Ruth Edna went after her at a half-run, forgetting her towel until she arrived breathless at Hattie's. Then she drew Hattie into the shade of the weeping willow, holding aside the branches like glass curtains of green crystals, the pointed leaves like little tongues flicking them with sharp edges as they passed. Hattie studied Ruth Edna's arms and swore in all honesty she did not see a single freckle. “Well, next time, wait,” Ruth Edna said, her mouth drawn into a thin warning line.

“Ruth Edna,” Hattie said as they went on, “did you see Ed Veazey's legs?”

“Well, I didn't
look
, if that's what you mean. But I can tell you, men's legs are all the same.”

“They are?” Hattie said, astonished.

“Men, Hattie,” Ruth Edna said, sweeping her arm protectively about her like a brooding hen, “have all the advantages in this world. They can hide their flaws, and they can marry if and when they choose.” Her voice broke surprisingly, but Hattie did not notice. She stood still and said, “I want to see that bird, and I'm scared to, too.”

“Oh, go on,” Ruth Edna said roughly.

Hattie rounded the corner of the house and cried, “There he goes!” She went in pursuit and presently came from beneath the house, bony rear first, a chicken feather caught in her hair, presenting the bird dustily. “Look a-here. Sick eye.”

Ruth Edna stepped back a nose length. “He don't look no different to me.”

“No diff-e-runt! Don't you remember how his feathers used to shine in the sun, all colors of the rainbow!”

“Well,” Ruth Edna said, thinking he did sort of look like the stuffed owl she'd had in the attic twenty-five years.

Hattie put the rooster down, and he ran on buckling legs, falling from one side to another, as if there were something in his stomach heavy as a bowling ball. “He's not long for this world,” Ruth Edna said. “Let's face it.”

“But, Ruth
Ed
—na!” Hattie said.

“Well, I got to go. I got a sick human to look after, you know. Give him a little whisky in a eye dropper.”

“Why, I don't have any whisky,” Hattie said.

“Hattie——” Ruth Edna said.

“Well, how much?”

“Oh, let him live while he can!” Ruth Edna went out to the yard and waved back gaily.

Hattie stood on the steps and watched her go, an emptiness in her heart. In all fairness, she told herself, Ruth Edna was exactly what Cotter said she was: the meanest woman alive, white or colored.