The Axman Cometh (2 page)

"I guess you know Dab's coming up on fifty," Ernestine says.

"It
is
next month, isn't it? I always do get
Dabney's
birthday mixed up with my stepbrother Horace's. One's the fifth of June and the other's the seventh, but for the life of me—"

"It'll be the fifth—"

"And we're going to give him the surprise of his life!" Shannon exclaims, beckoning for the jug of tea with which her mother has just refreshed herself. But Ernestine refuses to share, with a shake of her head and a little lift of the shoulders as if to indicate the jug is now empty. Or else she doesn't want Shannon to taste what she's cut the tea with.

"A
surprise
party! Oh, listen, you can count on me—this goes
no
farther! Who all are you going to invite?"

"I don't know," Ernestine says, lowering herself to the arm of a wooden lawn chair that Shannon sees, with a critical eye, needs repainting before the party. "Shannon's the one who thought of this. She's making all the arrangements."

Shannon nods, an emphatic affirmation of the magnitude of her plans.

"I'm sending out a hundred and fifty invitations—mom, do you think there's any chance Uncle Gilmore would come?"

"I couldn't say." Ernestine blows smoke, showing the underside of her upper lip like a whinnying horse. "It's a long way from Miles City, Montana. Plus the fact that Gil was never your father's favorite brother. And vice-versa. That Gilmore will offer to jack your jaw over the
pettiest
of things."

"Well, but he's the only brother Dab has

left, and this is an important occasion."

"Did I ever tell you Gil got drunk at our wedding and tried to—no, I never did tell you kids things like that."

"Tell her later," Madge says, "and me too if it's one I didn't hear already. I've always deeply regretted that you don't have a picture of him wearing the bridal bouquet like a— well, I just don't know how to say it politely."

"Jockstrap," Shannon says, affecting boredom, "I've been hearing all about it since I was ten."

Ernestine chuckles, throwing away the little bit remaining of her cigarette as Madge returns her attention to Shannon and the surprise party.

"A hundred and fifty people! Where are you going to find a place in the neighborhood with enough room, except maybe the Sunday school building or the VFW."

"Right here. Our back yard's plenty big enough! I'm going to decorate—you know, with Japanese lanterns and stuff."

"That's a
nice
idea. I could give you a hand with the food."

"Would you, Mrs. Mayhew?"

"Sure, we'll keep everything in our garage, in washtubs and that spare Frigidaire
Adolphus
got to running again the other day. Otherwise, how're you going to keep it a secret from Dab? What about entertainment —you know, if you play your cards right,
Adolphus
could probably persuade the Old Warhorses to do their act. Costumes and all." The Old Warhorses are a barbershop quartet; Madge Mayhew's husband is the somewhat creaky baritone of the cornball group. Most everybody in town calls him "Ragtop" because of the quality of his ill-fitting hairpiece.

Shannon says cautiously, "Oh, thanks, Mrs. Mayhew, but—I think I've got a band already, some guys I know from the college."

"Do they play rot-and-roll?" Madge says, accusingly, then relents in her condemnation. "Well, I suppose all the young people will want that caterwauling. Anyway, I think this party of yours is going to be a peck of fun!"

Shannon glances at her mother, who nods but with no show of approval, then gets up to hobble over to the quart cans of tomato plants she is planning to set out when she finishes with the beans.

"The only thing to watch out for," cautions Ernestine, "is the weather. Better check your
Old Farmers.
Because there's no way we're going to try to fit one-hundred-fifty people in
my
house. Provided that many trouble to show up. By the way, where are they all going to park?"

"Church lot. It's only a couple of blocks." Shannon, convinced of her mother's lack of enthusiasm, uncovers the sketch pad and moves closer to the fence to show her work to her new ally Mrs. Mayhew.

"Here's how I'm going to do the invitations."

"Well, look there! Did you draw that? Isn't that Popeye the sailorman?"

"It'll look more like Dab when I'm finished."

"And there's you and Chap and Allen Ray in sailor suits! And Ernestine too! Why, these pitchers are just as clever as they can be! What
d'you
call '
em
, caricatures? Like some of those editorial cartoons in the Topeka
Capital
that get
Adolphus
so riled he could spit bloody gallstones. Ernestine, you have just got to come look at this!"

Ernestine obligingly leaves her tomato plants and, over Shannon's shoulder, studies the caricatures on the sketch pad.

" '
Ain't
it nifty? Dab is fifty.' Well, now. That's very clever, Shannon."

"This girl has
talent
to spare. Nobody can tell me any different."

"I'm going to write and illustrate my own books," Shannon mumbles, flushed and happy. "I've got some ideas already."

"She's just full of ideas," Ernestine agrees, but with that faint tone of belittlement Shannon thinks she hears lately; wondering if it somehow has to do with her mother growing older in pain, limiting herself more and more to house and garden while Shannon dreams, aloud, of the wide world, of accomplishment and fame. "Have you given any thought as to how much this party will cost?"

"Yes," Shannon says. "Three hundred fifty dollars for everything, that's food and drinks too. We're all going to share the cost—I mean, I'll pay a hundred, Allen Ray says he'll give me another hundred and Chap is good for fifty, he's saved more than that from his paper route. Then, I thought you might—"

"Sure, count me in for fifty," Ernestine says, smiling, her little teeth like ruined corn in a parched field. She pulls on her shabby work glove. "It'll be worth it, just to see the expression on Dab's face. But you never know which way his mood's going to go, Shannon. He may get the sulks and ruin the party for everybody."

Shannon experiences a sudden hostile closing of her throat, swallows, waits three sharp heartbeats and then is compelled to say, swiftly and cruelly, "You don't want to do this, do you? If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't do anything—oh, bake another cake. Same as always."

Ernestine looks at her, unruffled but with the bleakness of one who has successfully throttled all temperament, and says, "You have to understand how Dab and me feel about things—as we get on in life."

"I think he's going to have a perfectly wonderful time! Because—all we ever do is take Dab for granted; when has anyone ever treated him as if he was important?"

"Well, that's the way it is, isn't it?" Ernestine says, casting around ironically, taking in the neighborhood, all of the small city in which they live. "When you come down to it, who matters that much?"

"Dab's important to me!"

"Okay, then," Ernestine says, with her air of edgy agreeableness, "coming from you, this
party'll
mean something to him. Like as not."

Madge says, re-tuning the conversation as if it were a static-y radio, "How are you going to keep the party a secret from Dab? If you plan to string up Japanese lanterns and all—"

"Oh, we can do that the day of the party. Dab always closes up at six-thirty, but on Friday nights he usually takes sin hour after work to go over accounts at the back of the store. He won't get home until it's almost dark."

"That'll work," Madge says, nodding. "I'll have to tell
Adolphus
that something's afoot, but you know how he is, Shannon: never says two words to anybody unless it's politics. Then you can't shut him up."

Ernestine pulls a little sack of cigarette tobacco from a pocket of the Navy surplus shirt she wears to garden. She cocks an ear.

"Washing
machine's
on spin, and it's out of balance. Can you get those clothes on the line while we've got this nice breeze?"

Shannon sprints across the deep yard to the back porch. "I'm going to give Uncle Gilmore a call!"

"Wait
til
after five o'clock!" Ernestine advises. "No sense running up our phone bill over a lost cause!"

Shannon's older brother Allen Ray is a late riser. In pajama bottoms and a fading, sunflower yellow-and-brown high-school athletic jersey he stands in front of the open refrigerator in the kitchen drinking milk from a bottle. "This milk's old," he complains. He finishes it anyway. Allen Ray is nineteen. He works at the T P Garage and races his stock car on five-eighths of a mile oval dirt tracks around Emerson and as far north as Nebraska. His draft board has called him for his physical the second week in June, and Shannon is worried, with Vietnam an increasingly prominent topic on the nightly television news. He comes out to the porch with a doughnut and watches Shannon reorder the load of wet wash in the drum of their old

Bendix
. "What's a lost cause?"

"Uncle Gilmore. Mom doesn't think he'll come. Look at the drawings I did for the invitations."

"Oh. Neat."

"How did you make out last night in Ellsworth?"

"Blew a head. Finished fourth."

"How much was that worth?"

"Twenty-five bucks."

"Do you think they'll take you?"

"What? Oh, the Army. Sure, they'll take me. I'm a perfect physical specimen." Allen Ray, habitually slouchy, straightens and flexes his biceps. The fly front of his pajamas gaps open.

"So I see," Shannon says with a smirk. Allen Ray grins and turns away to close up. "Allen Ray?"

"
Yo
."

"Why don't you join the Navy first, before you're drafted? That'd make Dab so proud."

"Boats," Allen Ray says disdainfully. "I'm going to be a tanker."

"Like Elvis?"

Allen Ray licks cinnamon and sugar from his fingers. "I think that was all publicity. I'll bet they never let him anywhere
near
a tank."

Shannon begins singing "Return to

Sender" in a small but true voice and turns the washing machine on again. It doesn't sound right, and her brother is frowning. "What do you think's the matter, Allen Ray?"

"Bearing."

"Can you fix it?"

"Tomorrow. I'm late for work."

"Oh, would you drop me by school?"

"Saturday? What's going on?"

"Prom committee, then I've got to get ready for the art exhibit in the library."

"Who's taking you to the prom?"

"Three guesses, first two don't count."

"Most Likely to Succeed. At what?"

"At using his head. Full scholarship to Washburn. Are you going to marry Sondra before you get drafted?"

"Hell no. What is she going to do, follow me around from Texas to Germany?"

"She could live here with us," Shannon says as the idea pops into her head. "I like Sondra. It'd be great to have somebody almost my own age to talk to."

"I'm not getting married so you'll have somebody to talk to," Allen Ray replies with that sardonic little twist of the lip that is, to a T, his mother. Shannon mimics him and Allen Ray turns with a shrug. "Look, I'm going to pull on some clothes and go. You ready, or what?"

"Right with you. I just need to get this load of sheets on the line—"

"They're pretty bloody, aren't they?" Allen Ray says. But so is he. Shannon looks up from pulling the stained, dripping sheets out of the
Bendix
to see him hanging by one arm caught in pincers of broken glass in the kitchen door, his throat —open— almost to the back of his neck, showing the severed ends of the tough, bone-white windpipe.