Solemn (27 page)

“You know,” Redvine second-thought, “don't worry about it. We give away promotional copies all the time, for prizes and stuff.”

“But we never entered a contest. Please, I insist,” Mrs. Watson said.

“So do I,” Redvine told her. “Have a good day. Enjoy the machine. If you want more, just call DigiCate or mail in an order form.”

“We will,” Mrs. Watson said. “I promise you.”

“Fair enough.” Redvine grinned. He turned and slapped Solemn on her shoulder to go. The man and his daughter walked across the yard back to the Malibu. The man pulled off in such an expert and stylish fashion the tires did not even roll out any dust from the dirt road they had mistakenly traveled onto.

*   *   *

‘Walter' was in Orlando now. Or maybe Mobile or Dayton, as Redvine found him once while he hunted down advice on how to sell DigiCates back to DigiCate. He was actually trying to break through ‘Walter's' cell phone on a Monday night, in the week he took off to rethink things, when Alice Taylor drove up into the yard, with two of the chipped-toothed and pockmarked boys from Jackson in the passenger seat and back, hard-core and maybe horns under their caps or 666 tattooed on their wrists, and their Ruger pistols pocketed only because Solemn was out front in the yard with lightning bugs at her knees, letting the mosquitoes tear at her while she twirled Dandy up with string.

The future was here.

 

TWENTY-THREE

The landscape stayed too long plain and uneventful, relieved here and there by the triangular roof of the only houses at the road for miles on the Mississippi Blues Trail, then finally Route 61 headed back to Attala's parts and Bledsoe and Singer's and bed. Once, a ghost town riveted the way. A sprinkling of trailers in the distance provoked Solemn to wonder how many girls inside could be like her. She was not alone. She had to imagine. Redvine was untalkative. His thoughts were scattered. No knots or knocked loose teeth or broken bones—yet. He wouldn't stay that way for long, he knew. He needed a big sale. Big. Not one. An entire lodge or block or ladies' club, maybe. He decided this time, Delta and back, would be it. As Solemn fingerprinted what could have been discount sales if left clean, Redvine noticed the statement of a silo it took minutes to look forward to but a second to pass.
I'm going west or east?
he thought.

Then, half mile later, electric and cable cords in taunt crisscrosses.

Seem like we already been this way,
Solemn felt.

Finally, a courteous pickup truck leaning half its body into the grass of rock road as Redvine did the same with the Malibu, so they both could pass. He barely knew where he was. He was just driving along. Then, in front of him, more than a few dissimilar houses crowded along a road, bearing owners' insignias on the mailboxes and kick-stood bikes in the yards. Where there were kempt mailboxes, there was income. Where there were bikes, there were children. Where there were mailboxes and bikes and children, there was the future to ride into. He stopped regretting Bolivar County, Mississippi.

“Finally.” Redvine sighed.

He reached into the glove compartment through the textures of their life stuffed inside: silky handkerchiefs Bev took to church, wrinkly carbons of contracts filled out but unsigned, scratchy foil around melted chocolate Solemn hoarded, a tough hemp sack ensuring his car registration and driver's license copy remained producible. Smooth and silky was the brochure for the Tudor homes. He flecked his collar and slapped his eyelids alert. On a weekday, there would be women behind any open curtains. Depending on their enthusiasm, he might have to find the nearest diner or coffee shop to rest until their husbands came home. He would bring Solemn inside, with him, to show his daughter.

He could have chosen the pebble-laden path leading up to the one-story white shingle house, basic and plain like a letter envelope, hedged by crape myrtles. There was another one like it across the street, a little longer and accented by a tin roof topped along a skinny driveway, wisteria fringed. He saw pickup trucks, spare tires, and carriage-size dome trailers in one yard. And though the region wasn't a fan of brick, these first two houses shrunk into shame next to several bi-level red- and yellow-brick ones. Those ones had balconies dart out from a few upper rooms. Solemn recognized the start of something in the jerky steering. Redvine patted the brakes to survey a house or yard, predict the occupants' occupations, guess at the character types. He knew what to look for: A little shed signaled collectors of impulses more than needs. A barn. If a barn was full, some profit off livestock maybe. If it was vacant, unnecessary, then there was an inheritance. He listened to a distant coach house when it said renters or relatives capable of leisure came around seasonally. The combination of all three was unusual, but he spotted this sum inside an enclave of winding road fit for just one car at a time. So, not much traffic or movement. What traffic there was, was predictable and never rushed. The house was weather-beaten into a havocked conveyance. Its yard was chock-full of a few dull and shiny vehicles, entrance set apart by ornate black posts. It was just the rapacious display he feared, for the groveling required. But altogether, it was the better hope.

“We gonna stop here,” he told Solemn.

Solemn was absorbed in a listing of presidents seemed just updated to “Bush,” on “Cleveland, Grover,” now, since she had seen the
Cleveland County
sign awhile back, saying it was home to him. Redvine swerved around to reach his briefcase in the backseat. He set it in his lap. He chugged the last of the tepid coffee in his thermos. He reached into his shirt pocket for ammunition against poor breath or weak voice—a Halls. Solemn got the radio to hurdle over the usual country and western into 103.9, urban contemporary. Redvine pointed to the stack of properties kitty-corner to the Malibu.

“I'll be here,” he said to her. “Stay in the car. Or come to that door.”

Solemn looked across to an entrance with three frosted floral panels and a gold emblem door knocker. In a place where there was scarcely a need for anyone but the postman to see a number to know the address, she took the door as her reference. Redvine exited the Malibu and opened the back door. He gathered the display models Solemn had already run through. It was a toll on his recently aching shoulders, even when he alternated sides, if he remembered.

*   *   *

A few songs later I noticed I ain't seen my daddy. He ain't motioned me inside to meet nobody who care to meet me. He ain't come back to the car. He wasn't kept standin out on the porch. He was inside the house still. There. A porch light shined in the afternoon. The sprinklers went haywire. It was hot. I wanted to walk in the water.

This pebble path massaged my feet. I felt 'em, but rocks couldn't cut me. I carried my flip-flops in my hand. A barefoot woman I was. I could smell the berry pie, felt the fresh-watered grass, heard somebody laughin, saw the paper on the porch. It was next to roses. I knew rosebushes was nearly impossible here, Mama said. Maybe, since somebody live here succeeded, Daddy found a customer who was tough-talkin him. Them ones always held him up. They didn't ever buy shit though. I pressed my ear to the door. I ain't hear nothin. I rang the bell. Some pretty chimes. I stood there for what seem like a long time, had my ear against this frosted door. I ain't hear nothin. Finally I grabbed hold of the warm sweaty knob to let myself in.

This first room was more than what I had imagined could be there. The wooden floor was dark and light and medium planks. A shiny black cat—no, telephone it was—sat at the door. It had its whole own table with a cushioned chair pushed into it, like the kids table at Thanksgiving. A Bell South phone book was in a cubby under the table. What I first heard like this cluckin at me, like from a teacher or old woman's tongue, turned out to be a grandfather clock. I ain't never seen one of those. I eased forward on the floor like it was a frozen lake, first 'cause I had no idea if it might creak and next to scoot out in secret if I needed to. Past the foyer was a parlor with huge patterned couches. A table large as my bed rested in the middle. Another table was a chess game with pieces laid out underneath on a glass step, teacups rested on top. I sized it all up: this leather photo album with a clear openin on the cover, for the yellow picture of a couple drowned in a wedding gown fit for two brides, a book of Mississippi swamps, paper called
The Bolivar Commercial
and
Time
and
Life
magazines just like my mama keep.

“Daddy?”

I wondered if it was a furniture set outside. Mmmmmmmmmmm … lemonade or iced tea and biscuit cookies come with that. In the next part, a piano sat black in a corner. A parrot cage. The birds was green and blue, part pink and yellow in some spots. Not even one wing flap to let nobody know they was here. Painted pictures of off-yellow and cream faces decorated the walls—dark wood framed, faces jut out, lookin like they had some complex messages. Boys and girls mostly. A few women. One man. The back door shined. I thought it was a light tunnel in back of the house. Yeah, I got a little mad, walkin through the cut slant in the kitchen, with every one of the dozens of porcelain cups and hundred stacked glass plates and handy teapots and tiny cauldrons and glass carafes stored behind small glass doorways. Who the fuck get to live in a dollhouse?

*   *   *

Redvine had walked up to the house same as Solemn. No one answered. He rang the bell, a couple times. He never would have otherwise, but he tried the knob. It was loose. He stepped in. Maybe this was the type of place where there were servants, a maid or an assistant. Someone to answer the door. So he had walked in and stood, half-expecting anybody who was home would sense a stranger in midst. And that stranger, a black man, would be something to shout out against. But he was a salesman. He had a daughter and even a business card with him. And he would claim he had come to look for her. He—
didn't know why
—grabbed a pair of
R
-monogrammed cream ladies' gloves dangled on a coatrack hook; tiny and dainty they were. He had always taken pride in being a small man, and the women had always loved his small hands. The women had loved more about him, too. He could have been even less faithful than he had ever been.

Earl Redvine had no idea how he would explain himself were he caught walking up crouching and moaning stairs, just to check. Instinct guided him to that as well. But again, no one. Just more of the same. The room doors upstairs all open. Beds made. Rugs pulled. Closets closed. The neckties and necklaces dangled from the corner of a mirror in one room. An inkhorn alone on the hallway secretary. A bathroom punctuated the middle of the mouthful of a hallway Redvine walked down. A clawfoot tub centered the room. The bathroom sparkled. Not a speck of soap or toothpaste on the oblong vanity mirror. A linen shower curtain hung from a few rungs, without a wrinkle in it. A stack of magazines rested on a small table near the bronze tissue paper holder. A vase, dried nettle and sage.

Redvine called, “Hello?” All he saw was all he did not have and maybe never would—the hole in the doughnut. There was a final consolation in it. Being his age. He had a son in the military. He had a daughter-in-law. He had grandchildren. He had a daughter, unruly but not without hope of being broken into respectable conformity. He had a beautiful wife who remained faithful in her ways with him and optimistic about all he attempted. He had indiscretions undiscovered and covered up, by another man and a well no longer used, fittingly. And the roof over his head had no payments under it. It was his. He owned it. He had accomplished much.

But he cried.

He cried for secrets he put on his daughter and a missing woman he did not really know. He cried his son and daughter never fell down steps the minute they learned to walk. Actually, they never had steps to fall down. He cried his son was married at a one-room church and his daughter could not marry in a cathedral. He cried someone was allowed to have bi-level and tri-level homes with barns and coach houses and lawns and pet dogs whose coats shone as if they had been waxed. He cried he never went to college or the military or anywhere else would get him beyond a few states around Mississippi. He cried, so much so he did not even see his daughter appear on the top floor of the house.

She caught him in the master bedroom. She had thought about it. A lot.

She giggled some when she spoke: “You know, we could just take they stuff.”

Redvine snapped out of it, came back. He focused on Solemn, so much taller and like her mama she had gotten, without him being able to pay bills, let alone attention.

“Yeah,” he kind of told her and himself. “I guess we can.”

*   *   *

Redvine stuffed rings and necklaces and broaches in his pocket. He moved frantically. But Solemn, who made him do it, did not. “Go back and empty those things out the boxes and bring 'em here … now!” he shouted. “Should be four or five boxes.”

Solemn's footsteps down the stairs and across the wooden floor sounded hollow. She heard the parrots chirping. But no, it was not a father or a mother or a son or a neighbor come through the back door to catch her and her father inside of this home, rummaging. Solemn shot out of the door. Once in sunlight, she looked across the yards. Folks were inside, locked and holed up. Perhaps eating lunch. In all the time she had ridden with her father, they had never come upon a house with the doors unlocked.

Solemn opened the door of the driver side to remove the key from the ignition. She went to the back of the Malibu and slid the key into the trunk's keyhole. The click sounded louder than ever. But there was still no one around. No cars on the road. No neighbors in the yards. It was quiet and peaceful. She lifted the lids off the tops of the DigiCate boxes and tossed the heavy machines into the trunk. She perspired under her arms and between her legs. Sweat dripped down from everywhere, it seemed. She resolved to go inside the house and use some of the soap she had seen in the bathroom:
French Milled
engraved atop it. She wiped her face as the sweat tickled it, so to not wet pretty soap. She took a last sweep of the avenue before she stacked four boxes into one another. Then she walked back to the house and let herself in like she really lived there.