Morning Glory (18 page)
Will was charmed.
"Thank you, Miss Beasley."
Still she wouldn't look at him. "No need to thank me for something that would've gone to waste anyway."
But he saw beyond her smokescreen to the woman who had difficulty befriending men and his heart warmed more.
"I'll see you next week."
She looked up only when his hand gripped the brass knob, but even from a distance he' noted the two spots of color in her cheeks.
Smiling to himself, Will loped down the library steps with his stack of books on one hip and the yellow envelope slapping his thigh.
"Myyy, myyy ... if it isn't Mr. Parker."
Will came up short at the sight of
"Afternoon, ma'am." He tried to move around her but she sidestepped adroitly. "What's your hurry?" She chewed gum as gracefully as an alligator gnawing raw meat.
"Got cream in the wagon that shouldn't be sitting in the sun."
She smoothed the hair up the back of her head, then, raising her chin, skimmed three fingertips down the V of her uniform. "Lawzy ... it's a hot one all right." Standing one step below Will, Lula was nearly nose to navel with him. Her eyes roved lazily down his shirt and jeans to the envelope on which Miss Beasley had written his name. "So it's Will, is it?" she drawled. Her eyes took their time climbing back up, lingering where they would. "Will Parker," she drawled, and touched his belt buckle with the tip of one scarlet nail. "Nice name ... Will." It took control for him to resist leaping back from her touch, but he stood his ground politely while she tipped her head and waggled her shoulders. "So, Will Parker, why don't you stop in at the cafe and I'll fix you a ni-i-ice glass of iced tea. Taste good on a hot one like this, mmm?"
For one horrified moment he thought she might run that nail straight down his crotch. He jumped before she could. "Don't think I'll have time, ma'am." This time she let him pass. "Got things to do." He felt her eyes following as he climbed the wagon wheel, took the reins and drove around the town square to Purdy's.
That woman was trouble with a capital T, and he didn't want any. Not of it or of her. He made sure he avoided glancing across the square while he entered the store.
Purdy bought the cream and the eggs and said, "Fine, anytime you got fresh, just bring 'em in. I got no trouble getting rid of fresh."
Lula was gone when Will came out of the store, but her kewpie doll act left him feeling dirty and anxious to get back home.
Eleanor and the boys were waiting under their favorite sourwood tree this time. Will gravitated toward them like a compass needle toward the North Pole. Here was where he belonged, here with this unadorned woman whose simplicity made Lula look brassy, whose wholesomeness made Lula look brazen. He found it hard to believe that in his younger days he'd have chosen a woman like that over one like this.
She stood, brushing off the back of her skirt as he drew up and reined in Madam.
"You're back."
"Yup."
They smiled at each other and a moment of subtle appreciation fluttered between them. She boosted the boys up onto the wagon seat and he transferred them into the back, swinging them high and making them giggle. "You sit down back there now so you don't tumble off." They scrambled to follow orders and Will leaned to extend a helping hand to their mother. He clasped her palm and for the space of two heartbeats neither of them moved. She poised with one foot on a wagon cleat, her green eyes caught in his brown. Abruptly she clambered up and sat down, as if the moment had not happened.
He thought about it during the days that followed, while he continued improving the place, scrubbing walls and ceilings, finishing the plastering and painting walls that appeared to never have seen paint before. He put doors on the bottom kitchen cabinets and built new ones for above. He bartered a used kitchen sink for a piece of linoleum (both at a premium and growing scarcer) with which he covered the new cabinet top. The linoleum was yellow, streaked, like sun leaching through daisy petals: yellow, which seemed to suit Eleanor best and set off her green eyes.
She grew rounder and moved more slowly. Day after day he watched her hauling dishpans and slop buckets out to slew in the yard. She washed diapers for only one now, but soon there'd be two. He dug a cesspool and ran a drainpipe from underneath the sink, eliminating the need for carrying out dishpans.
She was radiant with thanks and rushed to dump a first basin of water down the drain and rejoice when it magically disappeared by itself. She said it didn't matter that he hadn't been able to find enough linoleum for the floor, too. The room was brighter and cleaner than it had ever been before.
He was disappointed about the linoleum for the floor. He wanted the room perfect for her, but linoleum and bathtubs and so many other commodities were getting harder and harder to come by with factories of all kinds converting to the production of war supplies. In prison Will had read the newspaper daily but now be caught up with world events only when he went to the library. Still, he was aware of the rumblings in
Europe
and wondered how long
America
could supply
England
and
France
with planes and tanks without getting into the fighting herself. He shuddered at the thought, even as he took his first load of scrap metal to town and got a dollar per hundredweight for Glendon Dinsmore' s junk."
There was talk of
America
actively joining the war, though
America
Firsters-among them the Lone Eagle, Charles Lindbergh—spoke out against the
U.S.
drift toward it. But
Roosevelt
was beefing up
America
's defenses. The draft was already in force, and Will was of age, healthy and single. Eleanor remained blissfully ignorant of the state of the world beyond the end of their driveway.
Then one day Will unearthed a radio in one of the sheds. It took some doing to find a battery for it—batteries, too, were being gobbled up by
England
to keep walkie-talkies operable. But again he bartered with a spare can of paint, only to find that even when the battery was installed, the radio still refused to work. Miss Beasley found a book that told him how to fix it.
The particular hour he coaxed it back to life, "Ma Perkins" was on the air on the blue network. The boys were having their afternoon nap and Eleanor was ironing. As the staticky program filled the kitchen, her eyes lit up like the amber tube behind the RCA Victor grille.
"How 'bout that—it works!" Will said, amazed.
"Shh!" She pulled up a chair while Will knelt on the floor and together they listened to the latest adventure of the widow who managed a lumberyard in
Rushville Center
,
U.S.A.
, where she lived, by the golden rule, with her three kids, John. Evey and Fay. Anybody who loved their kids as much as Ma Perkins was all right with Eleanor, and Will could see Ma had gained a faithful listener.
That evening they all hovered close to the magical box while Will and Eleanor watched the boys' eyes alight at the sound of "The Lone Ranger" and Tonto, his faithful Indian friend, whom he called
kemo sabe.
After that, Donald Wade never walked; he galloped. He whinnied, shied, made hoof sounds with his tongue and hobbled "Silver" at the door each time he came in. Will playfully called him
kemo sabe
one day, and after that Donald Wade tried their patience by calling everybody else
kemo sabe
a hundred times a day.
The radio brought more than fantasy. It brought reality in the form of Edward R. Murrow and the news. Each evening during supper Will tuned it in. Murrow's grave voice with its distinctive pause, would fill the kitchen: "This ... is
London
." In the background could be heard the scream of German bombers, the wail of air raid sirens and the thunder of antiaircraft fire. But Will thought he was the only one in the kitchen who truly believed they were real.
Though Elly refused to discuss it, the war was coming, and when it did his number might be called. He pushed himself harder.
He put up next year's wood, scraped the old linoleum off the kitchen floor, sanded and varnished it, and began fantasizing about installing a bathroom—if he could come up with the fixtures.
And in secret, he read about bees.
They held, for him, an undeniable fascination. He spent hours observing the hives from a distance, those hives he'd at first believed abandoned by the insects but were not. He knew better now. The appearance of only a few bees at the hive opening meant nothing, because most of them were either inside waiting on the queen or out in the fields gathering pollen, nectar and water.
He read more, learned more—that the worker bees carried pollen in their back legs; that they needed saltwater daily to drink; that the honey was made in stackable frames called supers which the beekeeper added to the tops of the hives as the lower ones filled; that the bees ate their own honey to survive the winter; that during summer, the heaviest production time, if the laden supers weren't removed the honey grew so heavy it sometimes crowded the bees out and they swarmed.
Experimentally, he filled a single pan with saltwater one day. The next day it was empty, so he knew the hives were active. He watched the workers leaving with their back legs thin and returning with their pollen sacks filled. Will knew he was right without even opening the hives to see inside. Glendon Dinsmore had died in April. If no supers had been added since then, the bees could swarm anytime. If none had been taken since then, they were laden with honey. A lot of honey, and Will Parker wanted to sell it.
The subject hadn't come up again between himself and Eleanor. Neither had she produced any veiled hat or smoker, so he decided to go it without them. Every book and pamphlet advised that the first step toward becoming a beekeeper was to find out if you are bee-immune.
So Will did. One warm day in late October he followed instructions minutely: took a fresh bath to wash any scent of Madam from his body, raided Eleanor's mint patch, rubbed his skin and trousers with crushed leaves, folded his collar up, his sleeves down, tied string around his trouser cuffs and went out to the derelict Whippet to find out what the bees thought of Will Parker.
Reaching the car, he felt his palms begin to sweat. He dried them on his thighs and eased closer, reciting silently, Move slow ... bees don't like abrupt movement.
He inched toward the car ... into the front seat ... gripped the wheel ... and sat with his heart in his throat.
It didn't take long. They came from behind him, first one, then another, and in no time at all what seemed like the whole damn colony! He forced himself to sit motionless while one landed in his hair and walked through it, buzzing, the rest still in flight about his face. Another lighted on his hand. He waited for it to drill him, but instead the old boy investigated the brown hair on Will's wrist, strolled to his knuckles and buzzed away, disinterested.
Well, I'll be damned.
When he told Eleanor about it, she made up for the stings the bees had foregone.
"You did what!"
She spun from the cupboard with her hands on her hips, her eyes fiery with anger.
"I went out and sat in the Whippet to see if I was bee-immune."
"Without even a veiled hat!"
"I figured you never found one."
"Because I didn't want you out there!"
"But I told you, I rubbed mint on myself first and washed the smell of Madam off me."
"Madam! What in the sam hell has she got to do with it?"
"Bees hate the smell of animals, especially horses and dogs. It gets 'em mad."
"But you could have been stung. Bad!" She was livid.
"The book says a beekeeper's got to expect to get stung now and then. It comes with the job. But after a while you get so you hardly notice it."
"Oh, swell!" She flung up a hand disparagingly. "And that's supposed to make me feel good?"