Soldiers Pay (13 page)

“All right, Uncle Joe,” she said, fleeing kitchenward.

Before they were halfway through lunch the downpour had ceased, the ships of rain had surged onward, drawing before the wind, leaving only a whisper in the wet green waves of leaves, with an occasional gust running in long white lines like elves holding hands across the grass. But Emmy did not appear with dessert.

“Emmy!” called the rector again.

Mrs. Powers rose. “I'll go see,” she said.

The kitchen was empty. “Emmy?” she called quietly. There was no reply, and she was on the point of leaving when an impulse bade her look behind the open door. She swung it away from the wall and Emmy stared at her dumbly.

“Emmy, what is it?” she asked.

But Emmy marched wordless from her hiding place, and taking a tray she placed the prepared dessert on it and handed it to Mrs. Powers.

“This is silly, Emmy, acting this way. You must give him time to get used to us again.”

But Emmy only looked at her from behind the frontiers of her inarticulate despair, and the other woman carried the tray in to the table. “Emmy's not feeling well,” she explained.

“I am afraid Emmy works too hard,” the rector said. “She was always a hard worker, don't you remember, Donald?”

Mahon raised his puzzled gaze to his father's face. “Emmy?” he repeated.

“Don't you remember Emmy?”

“Yes, sir,” he repeated tonelessly.

VII

The window panes had cleared, though it yet rained. She sat after the men had left the table and at last Emmy peered through the door, then entered. She rose and to get her the two of them cleared the table, over Emmy's mild protest, and carried the broken meal to the kitchen. Mrs. Powers turned back her sleeves briskly.

“No, no, lemme do it,” Emmy objected. “You'll spoil your dress.”

“It's an old one: no matter if I do.”

“It don't look old to me. I think it's right pretty. But this is my work. You go on and lemme do it.”

“I know, but I've got to do something or I'll go wild. Don't you worry about this dress: I don't.”

“You are rich, you don't have to, I guess,” Emmy answered coldly, examining the dress.

“Do you like it?” Emmy made no reply. “I think clothes of this sort suit people of your and my type, don't you?”

“I dunno. I never thought about it,” splashing water in the sink.

“I tell you what,” said Mrs. Powers, watching Emmy's firm, sturdy back. “I have a new dress up in my trunk that doesn't suit me, for some reason. When we get through, suppose you come up with me and we'll try it on you. I can sew a little, and we can make it fit you exactly. What about it?”

Emmy thawed imperceptibly. “What use would I have for it? I don't go anywhere, and I got clothes good enough to wash and sweep and cook in.”

“I know, but it's always well to have some dress-up things. I will lend you stockings and things to go with it, and a hat, too.”

Emmy slid dishes into hot water and steam rose about her reddened arms. “Where's your husband?” she asked irrelevantly.

“He was killed in the war, Emmy.”

“Oh,” she said. Then, after a while: “And you so young, too.” She gave Mrs. Powers a quick, kind glance: sisters in sorrow. (My Donald was killed, too.)

Mrs. Powers rose quickly. “Where's a cup towel? Let's get done so we can try that dress.”

Emmy drew her hands from the water and dried them on her apron. “Wait, lemme get an apron for you, too.”

A bedraggled sparrow eyed her from the limp, glistening morning-glory vine, and Emmy dropped the apron over her head and knotted the cords at the back. Steam rose again about Emmy's forearms, wreathing her head, and the china was warm and smooth and sensuous to the touch; glass gleamed under Mrs. Power's towelling and a dull parade of silver took the light mutely, hushing it as like two priestesses they repeated the orisons of Clothes.

As they passed the study door they saw the rector and his son gazing quietly into a rain-perplexed tree, and Gilligan sprawled on his back upon a battered divan, smoking and reading.

VIII

Emmy, outfitted from head to heel, thanked her awkwardly.

“How good the rain smells!” Mrs. Powers interrupted her. “Sit down a while, won't you?”

Emmy, admiring her finery, came suddenly from out her Cinderella dream. “I can't. I got some mending to do. I nearly clean forgot it.”

“Bring your mending in here, then, so we can talk. I haven't had a women to talk to in months, it seems like. Bring it in here and let me help you.”

Emmy said, flattered: “Why do you want to do my work?”

“I told you if I don't have something to do I'll be a crazy woman in two days. Please, Emmy, as a favour. Won't you?”

“All right. Lemme get it.” She gathered up her garments and leaving the room she returned with a heaped basket. They sat on either side of it.

“His poor huge socks,” Mrs. Powers raised her encased hand. “Like chair covers, aren't they?”

Emmy laughed happily above her needle; and beneath swooning gusts of rain across the roof the pile of neatly folded and mended garments grew steadily.

“Emmy,” Mrs. Powers said after a time, “what was Donald like before? You knew him a long time, didn't you?”

Emmy's needle continued its mute, tiny flashing, and after a while Mrs. Powers leaned across the basket and putting her hand under Emmy's chin, raised her bent face. Emmy twisted her head aside and bent again over her needle. Mrs. Powers rose and drew the shades, darkening the room against the rain-combed afternoon. Emmy continued to peer blindly at her darning until the other woman took it from her hand, then she raised her head and stared at her new friend with beast-like, unresisting hopelessness.

Mrs. Powers took Emmy's arms and drew her erect. “Come, Emmy,” she said, feeling the bones in Emmy's hard, muscular arms. Mrs. Powers knew that lacking a bed any reclining intimacy was conducive to confidence, so she drew Emmy down beside her in an ancient obese armchair. And with heedless rain filling the room with hushed monotonous sound, Emmy told her brief story.

“We was in school together—when he was there at all. He never came, mostly. They couldn't make him. He'd just go off into the country by himself, and not come back for two or three days. And nights, too. It was one night when he—when he—”

Her voice died away and Mrs. Powers said: “When he what, Emmy? Aren't you going too fast?”

“Sometimes he used to walk home from school with me. He wouldn't never have a hat or a coat, and his face was like—it was like he ought to live in the woods. You know: not like he ought to went to school or had to dress up. And so you never did know when you'd see him. He'd come in school at almost any time and folks would see him way out in the country at night. Sometimes he'd sleep in folks' houses in the country and sometimes niggers would find him asleep in sand ditches. Everybody knew him. And then one night——”

“How old were you then?”

“I was sixteen and he was nineteen. And then one night——”

“But you are going too fast. Tell me about you and him before that. Did you like him?”

“I liked him better than anybody. When we was both younger we dammed up a place in a creek and built a swimming hole and we used to go in every day. And then we'd lie in a old blanket we had and sleep until time to get up and go home. And in summer we was together nearly all the time. Then one day he'd just disappear and nobody wouldn't know where he was. And then he'd be outside our house some morning, calling me.

“The trouble was that I always lied to pappy where I had been and I hated that. Donald always told his father: he never lied about nothing he ever did. But he was braver than me, I reckon.

“And then when I was fourteen pappy found out about how I like Donald, and so he took me out of school and kept me at home all the time. So I didn't hardly ever get to see Donald. Pappy made me promise I wouldn't go around with him anymore. He had come for me once or twice and I told him I couldn't go, and then one day he came and pappy was at home.

“Pappy ran out to the gate and told him not to come fooling around there no more, but Donald stood right up to him. Not acting bad, but just like pappy was a fly or something. And so pappy come in the house mad and said he wasn't going to have any such goings-on with his girls, and he hit me and then he was sorry and cried (he was drunk, you see), and made me swear I wouldn't never see Donald again. And I had to. But I thought of how much fun we used to have, and I wanted to die.

“And so I didn't see Donald for a long time. Then folks said he was going to marry that—that—her. I knew Donald didn't care much about me; he never cared about anybody. But when I heard that he was going to marry her—

“Anyway, I didn't sleep much at night, and so I'd sit on the porch after I'd undressed lots of times, thinking about him and watching the moon getting bigger every night. And then one night, when the moon was almost full and you could see like day almost, I saw somebody walk up to our gate and stop there. And I knew it was Donald, and he knew I was there because he said:

“‘Come here, Emmy.'

“And I went to him. And it was like old times because, I forgot all about him marrying her, because he still liked me to come for me after so long. And he took my hand and we walked down the road, not talking at all. After a while we came to the place where you turn off the road to go to our swimming hole, and when we crawled through the fence my nightie got hung and he said, ‘Take it off.' And I did and we put it in a plum bush and we went on.

“The water looked so soft in the moonlight you couldn't tell where the water was hardly, and we swam a while and then Donald hid his clothes, too, and we went on up on top of a hill. Everything was so kind of pretty and the grass felt so good to your feet, and all of a sudden Donald ran on ahead of me. I can keep up with Donald when I want to, but for some reason I didn't want to tonight, and so I sat down. I could see him running along the top of the hill, all shiny in the moonlight, then he ran back down the hill toward the creek.

“And so I laid down. I couldn't see anything except the sky, and I don't know how long it was when all of a sudden there was his head against the sky, over me, and he was wet again and I could see the moonlight kind of running on his wet shoulders and arms, and he looked at me. I couldn't see his eyes, but I could feel them somehow like things touching me. When he looks at you—you feel like a bird, kind of: like you was going swooping right away from the ground or something. But now there was something different, too. I could hear him panting from running, and I could feel something inside me panting, too. I was afraid and I wasn't afraid. It was like everything was dead except us. And then he said:

“‘Emmy, Emmy.'

“Kind of like that. And then—and then——”

“Yes. And then he made love to you.”

Emmy turned suddenly, and the other held her close. “And now he don't even know me, he don't even know me!” she wailed .

Mrs. Powers held her and at last Emmy raised her hand and pushed her hair from her face. “And then?” Mrs. Powers prompted.

“And afterwards we laid there and held each other, and I felt so quiet, so good, and some cows came up and looked at us and went away. And I could feel his hand going right slow from my shoulder along my side so far as he could reach and then back again, slow, slow. We didn't talk at all, just his hand going up and down my side, so smooth and quiet. And after a while I was asleep.

“Then I waked up. It was getting dawn and I was cramped and wet and cold, and he was gone. . . . But I knew he would come back. And so he did, with some blackberries. We ate 'em and watched it getting light in the east. Then when the blackberries were gone I could feel the cold, wet grass under me again and see the sky all yellow and chilly behind his head.

“After a while we went back by the swimming hole and he put on his clothes and we got my nightie and I put it on. It was getting light fast and he wanted to go all the way home with me, only I wouldn't let him: I didn't care what happened to me now. And when I went through the gate there was pappy standing on the porch.”

She was silent. Her story seemed to be finished. She breathed regularly as a child against the other's shoulder .

“And what then, Emmy?” Mrs. Powers prompted again.

“Well, when I came to the porch I stopped and he said, ‘Where have you been?' and I said, ‘None of your business,' and he said, ‘You whore, I'll beat you to death,' and I said, ‘Touch me.' But he didn't. I think I would have killed him if he had. He went into the house and I went band dressed and bundled up my clothes and left. And I haven't been back since, either.”

“What did you do then?”

“I got a job sewing for a dressmaker named Mrs. Miller, and she let me sleep in her shop until I could earn some money. I hadn't been there but three days when one day Mr. Mahon walked in. He said that Donald had told him about us and that Donald had gone to the war, and that he had come for me. So I have been here ever since. So I didn't see Donald anymore, and now he don't know me at all.”

“You poor child,” Mrs. Powers said. She raised Emmy's face: it was calm, purged. She no longer felt superior to the girl. Suddenly Emmy sprang to her feet and gathered up the mended clothes. “Wait, Emmy,” she called. But Emmy was gone.

She lit a cigarette and sat smoking slowly in her great dim room with its heterogeneous collection of furniture. After a while she rose to draw the curtains; the rain had ceased and long lances of sunlight piercing the washed immaculate air struck sparks amid the dripping trees.

She crushed out her cigarette, and descending the stairs she saw a strange retreating back, and the rector, turning from the door, said hopelessly, staring at her: