Prayers the Devil Answers (8 page)

ELLENDOR

Sometimes in the dead of night during Albert's illness, my mind began to wander, and I tried to think of things I ought to do, though mostly I forgot about them by morning. One thing I should have done was tell the sheriff's office and maybe one of the local bureaucrats that Albert was ailing. When I did remember one of the things that needed doing, I still didn't do it. I told myself I was too busy tending to my husband to bother about civilities, and partly that was true, but mostly I was shy about talking to strangers.

I knew I ought to tell them, though, because Albert was sheriff. And he was dying.

Albert was better at talking to strangers than I'll ever be. Maybe he got used to dealing with people when he was younger, working summers at those logging camps. Then we moved to town and he took the railroad job, which gave him even more chances to become accustomed to new people. After a while, he became good at it. Whether Albert took to somebody or not, he could smile at them, find something pleasant to talk about, and look at ease, which generally made the other fellow cotton to him. He did it so well that most people didn't realize that they never got any closer to Albert than they were on the day they met him. He'd pass the time of day with anybody, acting just as friendly as a hungry pup, but he never let people see what he thought or felt. Albert seemed so sociable, though,
that hardly anyone ever noticed how little of himself he gave away in conversation.

I asked him once if he thought he was acting false, being sociable to people he was indifferent to, but Albert said that was just the way you had to act if you lived in a town among strangers.

“People don't trust you if you're standoffish, Ellie. They think you have something to hide.”

“What you call friendly I call brown-nosing.”

He laughed. “Stubborn, ain't you? You'd better get used to town ways, hon, or else you'll get downright lonely here. Well, considering which branch of the McCourry clan you come from I don't reckon
you
ever would get lonely, but since you decided to live here in town, you're obliged to get used to talking to people. Someday you may need a favor. From a friend you might get one, but there are mighty few strangers who will put themselves out for you. They have no reason to.”

“Charity?” He knew I hated the very idea. “I'd never ask anybody for a favor, Albert.”

“I know you wouldn't want to, Ellendor, but someday you may have to.”

Well, Albert was right. It looked like that day had come, and I wasn't prepared for it. There hadn't been time for me to get used to social ways—although maybe a lifetime wouldn't have been long enough for me. I did try, but it came easier to Albert than it did to me.

I could see that he was right about friends being useful, though, because when he needed a favor, he got one. As much as his fine rec­ord as a deputy, Albert's genial gift of
seeming
with strangers had got him elected sheriff when the job came open.

Maybe townspeople found it strange that I kept to myself, but the people where we came from know that I came by it naturally.

In the little settlement I grew up in, our branch of the McCourry family was called the Solitary McCourrys, as opposed to the Preach
ing McCourrys or the Fiddling McCourrys. Last names weren't much use where Albert and I came from. Every family up there was descended from the few pioneer families who had settled the mountains around the time of the revolution. For the first couple of generations every pioneer family had raised about a dozen children apiece, so, as Albert used to joke about it,
“Sooner or later one of
us
married one of
them,
so we may be just fourth or fifth cousins, but we're all family.”
He reckoned that if you went back six or seven generations, you could find a common ancestor with just about everybody you knew, and many surnames were shared by people who considered one another no kin at all. With few last names for so many present-day families, the settlers' descendants had to think up other ways to tell who was from which branch of the family.

My kinfolk, the Solitary McCourrys, are known for keeping to themselves. Most of us were born that way. We weren't shy; at least most of us would claim we aren't. We can be just as helpful and friendly as anybody else when you meet us in church or at a community gathering. It is just that we don't need a lot of people around us all the time, and we tend to think that socializing is just as much hard work as chopping firewood. When it comes to strangers, my family is as elusive as deer.

We don't have any use for charity either. We never want anybody to think we are asking for anything. We fend for ourselves, and I expect that because of this most of us are particular about who we help in times of trouble. If we know you well, and if you are an honest, hardworking fellow who has fallen on hard times through some misfortune, I reckon most of us would give you whatever help you need. We have no use for shiftless people who want a handout instead of a job, though; and we downright hate those slick fellers who try to float through life on their good looks or their oily friendliness, forever trying to charm people into making life easy for them. As far as the Solitary McCourrys are concerned, being obnoxious is a grave
offense. We don't ingratiate ourselves with other people, for fear of being thought pushy or scheming. We called ourselves honorable, but Albert always said we were mostly proud, and maybe he was right about that.

When I first started keeping company with Albert as a young girl, some of the nosy old biddies in the community tried to warn him that he had taken up with one of the Solitary McCourrys, as if he hadn't known that all along. He didn't mind. Up the mountain my kinfolks' proud and chilly ways didn't matter much, because from one generation to the next people came to expect it. They knew the Solitary McCourrys didn't intend to offend anybody with their remoteness; it was just that the family was made that way.

When we were newlyweds all those years ago, Albert and I could not have foreseen that one day we would be pent up in a valley town among strangers. Here people judge you by what they see, without knowing anything about the ways of your family. But, for good or ill, here we were.

It hadn't been so bad when Albert worked at the railroad yard, or even when he got hired on as a deputy sheriff. None of Albert's friends seemed to mind that I kept to myself. In fact, most of them thought I behaved just as a woman ought to: quiet, polite, and never troubling anybody with opinions. Maybe the women found me as hard to talk to as I did them, but I tried to be pleasant, and since we had two boys to raise, nobody could fault me for sticking close to home. There are others around here who could do with a lesson from me, judging by the number of catty old gossips, wayward young wives, and contentious shrews there are in town.

With George and Eddie and a husband to look after, I always kept busy—cooking, sewing, scrubbing, canning the summer pole beans and tomatoes—all of which gave me the perfect excuse to stay home.

Life changed for me when the high sheriff got shot trying to catch a nest of moonshiners in the woods, but his term had almost
expired anyhow, and Albert made up his mind to put his name on the ballot for sheriff in the upcoming election. I don't think anybody else much wanted it, anyhow, seeing as how poor Buck Tyler had been the second sheriff in a row to get killed in the line of duty by lawbreakers. Everyone agreed that his death was a tragedy, but some said it was an unnecessary one. People said that with the whole country going bankrupt, you could hardly call it a crime if some poor fellows made whisky, just trying to get enough money to feed their families. It was better than begging, wasn't it? And whether it was a crime was a matter of opinion too. All it meant was that the moonshine still operators had not paid the government a tax on their whisky. There were a lot of folks who thought that if the government was allowing people to go hungry then they had a lot of damn gall asking for a cut of some poor fellow's hard-earned profits. Neither the whisky tax nor the Depression was the sheriff's fault, of course. Sheriffs didn't make the laws; they only carried out the orders of those that did, but maybe a sheriff ought to keep himself busy chasing the railroad tramps who stole chickens from honest folks, or looking into deaths that were a little too convenient for somebody. Bravery was only a virtue if you were doing something that needed doing, which, in their view, persecuting local bootleggers was not. They all said it was a shame that Sheriff Tyler got shot in the line of duty, but some of them also said that maybe the moonshiners had acted in self-defense, trying to protect what was theirs. I could see both sides of the argument, but nobody asked me what I thought, and I didn't tell them.

When Buck Tyler was killed, the county elections were less than two months away, and he had been up for reelection. With so little time left before the vote, the county officials granted Albert's request to serve as the acting sheriff until Mr. Tyler's term expired. The county's other deputies voiced no objection to that, not when they had just seen the last sheriff shot dead and buried. Between the danger and the
paperwork, none of them much wanted the job, even for a few extra dollars a month in their paychecks.

Albert wanted the job, though. The first reason he gave was that he thought it might be better to take on the job rather than having to be under the direction of somebody new. With our boys eating like wolves and outgrowing their clothes at every whipstitch, he said we could use the extra money, and, danger or no danger, I couldn't argue with that. Most of all, though, I suspected that Albert wanted the job to acquire the respect and importance that came along with it. The paperwork might be difficult for him at first, but he said he reckoned that anybody could learn to do it if they put their mind to it. I think he was counting on help from me with that too.

Albert wasn't afraid of hard work. In fact, the thought of being out of work, being unable to feed his family, terrified him. So with the blessing of everyone in the department and in the county government, he took over the job of sheriff, and hired an eager young fellow named Falcon Wallace to take his old job.

By election time, Albert had worked as hard as he could, and he had proved to everyone's satisfaction that he could do the job. Maybe it was mostly good fortune that nothing terrible happened in those few weeks before election, but Albert got the credit for it. Besides that, he hadn't ruffled anyone's feathers or made a nuisance of himself. He was always soft-spoken, but he was also resolute and fair. When he let it be known that he wanted to keep the job by being duly elected, nobody objected. Being a newcomer to town, Albert was not burdened with any old family loyalties that might be troublesome in delicate situations.

With the support of the county officials, the local business leaders, and his fellow deputies, and with votes from his old workmates at the railroad yard, newcomer Albert Robbins ran for sheriff and won the election. I think he found that campaigning was harder than the job. Even in a small town like this he had to do a bit of glad-handing
to campaign for office, conversing with strangers and asking for the favor of their vote, but he wanted the job bad enough to work to get it. I stood by his side—as the dutiful little woman, living testimony that the candidate was a solid family man—and I made myself smile and look as if I enjoyed talking to people.

Albert went to local civic meetings and visited a different church every week. The role of politician's wife put me in the path of strangers and I dreaded every occasion, but for Albert's sake, because he wanted it so much, I went along. I smiled until my cheeks ached and shook hands until my fingers were numb, all the while longing to be back in our little house by the railroad tracks.

The sacrifice was worth it, though. Albert wanted the job so much that I couldn't help but be glad for him when he won. Besides, the job of sheriff was perhaps the only chance he would ever have to get ahead, and for all our sakes I hoped he would do well at it.

Now no one would ever know whether or not he could have made a go of this opportunity, for he had been the high sheriff just shy of three months when he was stricken with the fever that carried him away forever. It was ironic: I had prayed so hard that Albert would be safe in the job—not be shot down by criminals nor killed in a car wreck while pursuing them—that it had not occurred to me that, young as he was, he should take ill and die of pneumonia, just the same as an ordinary person with a safer occupation.
Prayers the devil answers
,
they used to call it up home: when you asked for something and your wish was granted in such a way that it did you no good at all. Albert had not been killed in the line of duty, but he died all the same.

Now he was gone, and in the space of a week—from when he first took sick until the morning he died—I could feel myself growing old. Ever after, I thought, my life would stretch on and on, with no one ever sharing my bed again, no one holding me as Albert had. No one I had known all my life and could trust completely. I was only thirty-six.

Besides all the other sorrows, the loss of Albert meant that I would have no one to shoulder the burden of coping with strangers. Eddie adjusted to town living quicker than I did, on account of his being young, but he was still just a schoolboy, mostly ignorant in the ways of grown-ups. Now he would have to grow up fast, and it made me sad to think that if Albert died one of the things that would be lost was Eddie's childhood. Georgie was so young that he might not understand about death. In a few months' time, he might even forget his father altogether. And I had lost my barrier against the world.

Albert used to try to ease me out of my shyness, but he never managed to make much headway at it.
“What are you a-scared of, Ellendor?”
he would say, winking at me to calm me down when we had to be around people outside the family.
“They're just ordinary folks, hon, same as us.”