The Morning and the Evening (10 page)

As soon as he stepped back, he disappeared into the dusk. She heard him stumble once, right himself, swear softly and go on. She could not help but smile as she closed the window and returned to the room.

She lit one lamp and took Jake's shirts from the cedar chest and began to mend them. There was a smoky smell to them still from all the wood fires over which his momma had washed them in her black iron pot. Her perfect even stitches had long ago turned the collars and made patches that were almost invisible. Ruth Edna stared at the dead woman's handiwork, thinking of all that lost love and devotion. She wanted to cry, not knowing whether it was for Jake or his momma or herself. She felt devoid of bitterness, felt only a tired emptiness, and knew that the person she had not wanted to see upon arising had been herself.

Among the shirts some were beyond repair, and she wondered if she couldn't make Jake a shirt. She put down the finished mending and went outside. Flimsy as gauze, a little blue was left high up in the sky. It would gray soon and turn to dark too. In the garden a brown rabbit sat on its haunches, chewing tender greens, and stared at her. Who would fix the fence? she wondered.

She went out to the garden, and the rabbit ceased to chew, shuddered and bounded away. She lifted the crumpling gate and went in. Cotter, she noticed, had begun to tie up the tomato plants and had abandoned them to cascade, heavily laden, to the ground. Over the ragged row of greens she stood and looked at where the rabbit had chewed. She bent and began to pick, her fingers seeking expertly the youngest, tenderest leaves. She was going to cook Cotter a good supper tonight; she would cook the greens with a whole chunk of salt pork, the way he liked, instead of just with bacon grease. She'd even open some preserved thing that had been given them, instead of saving everything for holidays the way she had always done. Not until her lap was full of the dark gritty leaves did she look up.

Now dark had come. Only vague night-white clouds remained in the sky. She felt almost afraid beneath the giant canopy of night. She had a sudden desire to pray, but didn't know what to pray for. Finally she said, “Help all the sick folks.”

In the trees a few shrill locusts screamed. In the lettuce crickets cried, and faintly off in the orchard. Nothing was visible but the white of her own hands, and she seemed to be following them as she went back to the house. She lit a lamp in the kitchen and, glad of the quick yellow flame, she lit one in Cotter's room and in the front room too. She washed the greens and put them on to cook. They would take a long time, and supper would be quite late. She heard footsteps along the breezeway and, carrying the lamp, went toward the dining room. “Cotter, is that you?”

There was no answer.

Fearful, she called again, “Cotter!”

She came all the way into the dining room before she saw Jake. He stood outside the screen door, his nose pressed against it. His eyes followed the lamp.

“Oh, Jake. Come on in.” She motioned for him to open the door.

He came in, closed the door carefully behind him and stood just inside.

She gathered up the shirts. “You came too soon. I was going to wash these for you. How often does that girl do them? It don't seem like these have been done lately.”

She knew he did not understand a word, but she was glad of the sound of her voice in the room; it made this time seem more sociable.

“You know what I'm going to do?” she said, crossing the room. She held a shirt up against him, trying to get some idea of his measurements. Suddenly, without thought or intent, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. She held him about the neck an instant, quite strongly.

In that instant, she smelled the far-away smell of the hen house, but also something sweet. Stepping back, she saw jelly in the corners of his mouth.

While she watched, there appeared instead the drivel of his thick, foamy saliva.

She thought he was startled. “Jake—” she said.

Then she saw it was more than that. He had the look of an animal chased and caught.

He was terrified.

She put out her hands, but he was gone.

She followed him and was all the way to the front steps before she saw him. He had cleared the yard and jumped the fence. The shirt, caught on him somehow, floated behind in the night like a ghostly thing.

“Jake,” she called. “I didn't mean …”

Her voice fell away sorrowfully on the night air. She found it again and called again. “It was only me. Only Ruth Edna.…”

Her arms went out to the night and returned to her as they always had, empty.

Chapter Five

Billy Morgan pushed his chair back from the supper table and said angrily to his wife, “All right. All right.” He pushed an arm into each sleeve of a light sweater and scowled as he zipped it. “I'll be playing pitch at your momma's store,” he said, and was careful to slam the front door leaving the house.

Frances forgot instantly what they had argued about. Now that he was gone, she was in a hurry. She cleared the table quickly and said to her three-year-old son, “Eat!” in a shout reduced to a sound like steam escaping.

Billy Jr. tried and failed, dropped his spoon into the little well of gravy he had made in his mashed potatoes.

“Oh, God!” Frances said.

She went to the kitchen and returned with a sponge, wiped at the gravy spatters hurriedly while they became circles of grease widening one upon another, giving a dull glaze to the shiny blond furniture. Not that she cared.

Billy had picked out the furniture, and it was his as far as she was concerned. They had argued over it bitterly as they had argued over everything. All they had ever agreed on was getting married. Why that had been was the kind of thing one could go on asking oneself afterward forever, when it was too late.

Carrying the wet sponge, she went to the window, glanced out and saw Cotter May hurrying up the road to her mother's store: Miss Loma's, where the pitch game was held every Thursday night. She stared at what she could see of the store's lights, as if she might will Frank to leave. But it was too early. He could never leave before seven-thirty; now it was six. Waiting out the week between the Thursday nights when he slipped away from the game to come to her was almost more than she could bear.

At forty-four, Frank Patrick was fourteen years older than she. She remembered him first as a gangly boy coming to Sunday dinner with his parents, Brother and Mrs. Patrick. By the time she was grown, Frank was married. But in Marigold's limited social circles, he was considered still a “young married” when she entered that group. It was the group's custom to follow about on Saturday nights the dances that moved around the countryside from one lodge hall to another: Sarah, Sardis, Savage, Senatobia, Hernando and Marigold it went.

On these evenings she found herself increasingly in Frank's company. At first it was not so much by design as by circumstance. They liked the same tunes for dancing and preferred sitting for long periods of the evening merely watching, sometimes not even speaking. Most of the women did not drink at all, but Frances enjoyed moderate drinking very much, and it was companionable as they sat at the table together. To her, they had kindred senses of humor. She said to him once, “I think we're soulmates.”

He looked perplexed, said nothing, but put out an arm and gave her a surreptitious hug.

After a particularly bitter fight with Billy one Saturday, she cried out, “Oh, if only we could get free of each other!”

And he said, “Well, we never will. We're going to stick this out for the kids.”

Frances fell onto the bed, a heap of despair, and asked herself, Am I going to live forever, then, without love?

That evening, dancing with Frank, she suddenly moved closer and lifting her face, put it against his. He tightened his arm about her, more quickly than she could have hoped had she planned beforehand what she was going to do. They ceased to dance except in a parody of it, a reason for standing pressed together as they were in the middle of the floor.

She whispered, “I never thought that you …”

“Oh Jesus——.” He let out his breath as if he had been holding it a long while.

They left the floor and went out onto the porch where only lights treated against bugs burned, giving off a murky orange glow. I'll look terrible, she thought, like I don't have any lipstick on.

They stood close and stared at one another, prolonging the moment before they would kiss for the first time. When they had kissed, she thought, He's wonderful! They kissed again, and she put out her tongue and gave him a little lick about the chin and said, “Oh Frank, you're so sweet.”

Entwined, they went out into the night, and as though through a maze, went about the parking lot seeking his car. Then he stood with his hand on the door handle and said, “I don't want to do it in a car. I haven't done that since I was sixteen. But there's no place else, and I don't want to wait.”

“Oh, no. Don't wait.”

What if he doesn't like me, she thought. What if I'm like I am with Billy. Suddenly she was afraid. What if I am cold?

But she was not.

She cuddled up to him and said, “Frank, was I all right?”

“All right? Baby, you were swell.”

“Swell——. My husband thinks I'm cold.”

“Cold! What the hell does he expect? You're hot as a little firecracker.”

“I
am
cold with him. He just never has been able to make me feel the way I did with you just now.”

“Well Jesus, I'm sorry.”

“So am I,” she said, and tried to smile.

Presently, he said, “I could do it all over again. How 'bout you?”

“I could. But we don't have time.” She sat up and bit at his ear. “In fact, we've been gone so long now, I'm scared. We'd better hurry.”

They got out of the car and went back hurriedly the way they had come. She kept thinking, Now I'm really me. She felt she had been a girl when she came to the dance, but that she would go home a woman. And not a cold one either, she told herself happily.

“Have you done anything like this before?” she said.

He gave her a little slap on the behind and winked. He lit a cigarette, and in the match's flare she saw gray where his hair was beginning to turn at the temples. She thought this was thrilling. Beneath his eyes was a slight puffiness that had come with age, and she thought this was thrilling too. Oh, I'm going to love him so, she thought. He's so cute.

“Frank, what are we going to do?”

“I don't know. I'll have to figure out something. I'd sure like to see you again.”

“I have to see you. You just don't know.”

They had come to the lodge. Faintly above the door in the dark the white V.F.W. letters stood out. He said, “You'd better go around to the side entrance, like you've been to the women's toilet. I'll stay here and smoke like I've been here all the time.”

They separated, and when they met again inside, she sat with her eyes on him the rest of the evening.

They did not meet again for many weeks, not until Billy and several others went duck hunting. Then Frances went into the yard early and stayed close by the fence setting out tulip bulbs. As she had known he would, Frank passed by close to ten o'clock on his way to get the mail. When she waved, he pulled his pick-up truck to the side of the road immediately.

“Good morning,” she said. “I thought maybe Eleanora was with you. I wanted to ask her something about these bulbs. She always has such a pretty garden.”

“No, she's home.”

“I'm surprised you didn't go to Stuttgart with the rest of the gang.”

“I don't care too much for duck hunting.”

“Oh, is that right? Well, it's a nice little overnight trip anyway.”

“That's so,” he said. He tipped his hat. “I'll tell Eleanora you want to ask her something about the garden. Nice to see you, Frances.” He drove away.

Did I make a fool of myself? she wondered. Did he understand? Does he care?

But it was no more than an hour before he arrived in her kitchen, freshly washed and shaved, having come up the back way. With few words, they went to bed. Briefly she wondered if that was all she meant to him. Am I just a slut? she asked herself. Why don't I care that it's in Billy's own bed?

But thinking their love was beautiful, she did not care. Her anguish at last was put to rest. Later he made his way out again successfully the way he had come. They had hit upon Thursday nights as their only solution: Billy would be out of his house, Frank would have an excuse for leaving his. There would be risks. Suppose her mother or a neighbor dropped by? Suppose Eleanora found out he left the game early each week? They felt them risks worth taking.

She looked at herself now in a new light. Before, she had been always ready to criticize others. Now she was what they called “the other woman.” She had done what they called “stealing love”—but she had needed the love so much. If she had stolen food for her starving children, would anyone have thought it wrong? Wasn't it almost the same?

Darkness had come into the room and dusk to the world outside. Street lights made lonesome islands of light. How peculiar that the two men were there playing cards together: the one, a stranger to whom she had been married for five years; the other, who had only had to kiss her once for her to belong to him entirely. She felt she had belonged to Frank forever, even while she was still in the region of darkness and he was born.

When she turned back to the room, Billy Jr. sat still with his supper unfinished. She took away his plate to the kitchen and washed the dishes quickly, furtively, as if Billy might suddenly look over her shoulder. He made the child eat everything on his plate, always! If he were allowed to goof off now, he might goof off forever, he said. Billy had so many rules, Frances' head ached sometimes trying to keep up with them all.