Authors: Charlotte Bacon

Tags: #Fiction, #Short Stories (Single Author), #test

A Private State: Stories (26 page)

Page 174

When the singing is over, Mrs. Pritchard feels rooted to the pew. The service is done. The girls drift out, looking soft in the odd green light. The young men follow them. The slowest are the old women who lift themselves with short, tough sighs. Mrs. Pritchard finally pulls herself away. The Reverend Wilkins is on the steps, greeting parishioners. "Welcome, welcome," he says to Mrs. Pritchard. He grasps her hand as warmly as the others, as casually. His hand, deep chocolate, with skin brushed ashy gray across the knuckles, is warm and dry. His palm is the color of impatiens.

The sky is light pink, with a high skin of pale clouds. More men have gathered at the Blue Parrot, and some women as well. People are talking more raucously. Mrs. Pritchard notices there actually is a parrot, huge and yellow. She thinks its wings must be clipped but then she sees a thong that runs from one of its feet to the table leg. The bird looks dusty, half-asleep. Its beak curves, reminds her of a small thick sickle. Mrs. Pritchard feels the old dread of her illness descend on her shoulders. She wishes Charles were here, to drive, to fold her into bed. She is scratching for her keys in the bottom of her bag when a hand covers hers.

"Mrs. Pritchard." She looks up. It is Dominic. "What were you doing here?" he asks. She feels as if she's trespassed again but then she thinks, I was at church, a perfectly harmless church service. She points to St. Anselm's and says, "There, I was right there."

"I'll take you back to the hotel, if you don't mind," he says. He holds out his hand for her bag, which she hands him reflexively. Dominic fishes out the keys. "Watch your skirt, ma'am," he says as he helps her in. The door slams. She fumbles for the safety belt, and Dominic, in beige pants and a blue shirt, no bow tie in sight, settles himself behind the wheel. The car has one long seat, uninterrupted by a gear box or emergency brake. He has pulled himself completely to the driver's side. Even off duty, especially off duty, he is not open to any irregularities of behavior. He is so

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clearly in control there is nothing she can do but watch, and there's some relief in this. He's taking her back to where it's safe.

Then as the car gains speed, she starts to wobble with anger. He has pushed her aside and assumed he could get away with it. She gropes for something caustic, something he'll remember, but all that comes is, "How dare you?" Carrothers's words, and now they have also leapt from her mouth.

"How dare you," Dominic says quietly. "How dare you." The car has paused in traffic and they stare at each other. He doesn't move, but Mrs. Pritchard feels the heavy slap of his dislike. They are all the same, she feels him thinking. Every single bloody white bitch. Scratch the surface and it's all the same. She feels her own dislike fly right back. He guns the motor; the car jerks forward. She cannot let him get away with this, with his presumptions. She has tried too hard in her life, but when she says, "You cannot simply force me out of the way!" it sounds like the complaint of a crone. Can he tell I'm sick? she thinks.

"And what are you going to do about it, Mrs. Pritchard? Do you know what 'playing chicken,' down here means? Would you know how to save your hide if some guy came toward you, this time headlights on high, to see who panics first? Would you now, ma'am?"

She is silent, shamed. She has pretended she can wander the island, in charge of an afternoon. But she also wants to yell "Damn it! I'm an old lady! I wanted to get away from hearing that woman tear you apart! From being a guest! Can't you understand it's important to use good hours?" Instead, she says, "Why were you there?"

"It's my half-day off," he says. He drives with vengeful, reckless speed. He skirts potholes and grazes sidewalks. People and poultry flee, unharmed. He drives exceedingly well. At least she won't die in an accident. Once she's sure of this, the anger rises again, even hotter. To be absconded with in this way! To have her car

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commandeered! It would never have happened if Charles were here. She damns her husband, the porkish men he calls his colleagues, and men in general with their superior, violent ways. She glances at Dominic or should she call him Mr. Watson. His lips are a tight, quivering line. His own anger makes him glow. How much he must hate me, she thinks, suddenly quite calm. How strange it is.

She sees the metal pineapples that announce the entrance to the Black Moon. He slows as if to pull into the driveway. "Are we stopping, Mr. Watson?" she asks. "I have enjoyed the scenery, but I would like to talk about this for a moment." Since her dealings with doctors and lawyers, Mrs. Pritchard has learned a directness of questioning with people who try to steer her from critical details. She rolls down her window and looks at the green hills turning black in the twilight. It is the time of day the French call "between the dog and the wolf." She tells Mr. Watson this, this expression from the middle ages.

"Here the dogs are wolves," he says.

"As we witnessed on the beach today," says Mrs. Pritchard. "Why do you work for a woman like that, Mr. Watson?"

"Do you know what it means to have a job on this island?" His voice rises now and breaks. His supple hands are shaking.

"I don't know a damn thing about this island!" Mrs. Pritchard yells, her voice finally jolting back to its full darkness. "I don't know anything! Show me something! Show me one damn thing!"

"All right," he shouts. For an instant, the car rings with their hot voices. Then the anger dies. Mrs. Pritchard realizes she has not yelled like this since her diagnosis: she has kept herself muted, as if to conserve essential heat. She wonders if he feels this, too. "Do you yell a lot, Mr. Watson? And at white women?"

He turns to her and says dryly, "It doesn't happen often in my line of work." He keeps looking at her. "And you, do you yell at white women?"

"Oh yes," she says, "all the time. Black men aren't exactly in my

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repertoire, though.'' How amazing they have dealt with each other like this, at full volume. How strange they bring this out in one another and that they should find each other now.

They drive in silence. Cars, still without headlights even though it's grown dark, lurch past them. Have the other drivers seen that inside this little car there is a sardonic black god and a stumpy white woman heading Lord knows where?

Then it strikes her this is what it means to be alone. To have no one expecting you. It's what Charles will have when she is dead. This kind of separateness is what she will have in the last months, and she guesses that this is what the disease will bring, an occupation of herself, an experience so odd and personal it will not bear translation.

Despite the dark trees and the smell of charring meat, she feels a sort of excitement, something on the line between fear and pleasure. It reminds her of the time she scrambled across an ancient aqueduct that spanned a French river so far down it was more like a gleaming root than water. Charles had taken photos of the foundations. When she'd come backhair in a windy tangle, heart pumpinghe'd said, "You know, they really shouldn't let people walk on this thing; a lot of that mortar in the big stones below is crumbly." He hadn't really grasped why she'd been upset he hadn't come to fetch her. "Men are a piece of work," says Mrs. Pritchard aloud.

Mr. Watson nods, and turns down a road, unpaved but smooth. Mrs. Pritchard can smell salt, and as they round a corner she sees the ocean, a copper slice in the sinking sun. In the center of the red bay is a factory, black in this light, a knot of tubes and pipes and smokestacks crouching on pylons.

Mr. Watson stops the car. The air is filled with the chattering of birds they cannot see. Brush crackles behind the trees. Before them is a wide, paved lot whose concrete has split with sprouting palms.

"What is it?" Mrs. Pritchard asks.

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"An old bauxite plant. They found cheaper labor in the Soviet Union," Mr. Watson says. He gets out and leans against the hood.

Mrs. Pritchard also leans on the hood, not quite as casually. The engine, as it cools, makes small pops and rattles. Mr. Watson lights a cigarette. Its tip glows the same color as the water.

It is nearing total darkness now and Mrs. Pritchard listens to the slap of water on the pylons of the abandoned plant. In the dimness, it is impossible to see the sharp edges of Mr. Watson's face. She realizes she hasn't thought once about her illness since the car ride began. It's as if direct contact with him keeps it at bay. She makes a guess and asks him if he likes opera.

He waits a moment then says yes. He turns toward her; that much she can see in the deepening dark. "You hold your head like a singer," he says.

She says, "Yes, of course, that's what it is, isn't it. Keeping the throat clear. You have it, too."

They are silent for a few moments. Mrs. Pritchard thinks if they were speaking in French, they would nonetheless use the formal address, even after the intimacy gained through mutual loss of temper. Despite her curiosity, there's just so much territory they can cover. "How long have you worked at the Black Moon?"

"Four years. Three for the man before Carrothers, one for her. He was Rhodesian, too."

"Is she going to fire you?" Mrs. Pritchard asks.

"Soon," says Mr. Watson. "She doesn't like staff with backbone."

"What will you do then?" she asks, looking out at the blackening sky. It is the time sharks feed, the worst time of day to swim, although the water, for the first time in her stay, looks inviting.

"I used to work here," he says, pointing at the plant with the hand that holds the cigarette as if that answered the question. "There's McDonalds, Kentucky Fried."

"Do you want to stay in Jamaica?" she asks, feeling that flight might be an answer.

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