The School of Beauty and Charm (19 page)

“Y'all think he braids that tail himself?”

T. C. offered me half of his sandwich. It was nearly lost in his
big hand, and seeing the shallow indention of his fingers in the soft white bread, I couldn't help but imagine how he would hold my breast.

“Thank you,” I said.

Behind me, the men sniggered.

T. C. leaned even closer. He put one hand over his ear.

“Is that a yes or a no?” His arm was as big around as my leg, and as he turned closer to me, the span of his chest hid my face from the other men. He took jagged, heavy breaths, like an old man with a bad heart.

“Yes,” I said, trying to keep my hand steady as I removed a cigarette from my pack. His lighter came out in a flash. I had the wrong end of the cigarette in my mouth. He turned it around for me, ignoring the hoots from the back table. “I mean no,” I said. My voice sounded fake, the way it did when I showed my ID to a bartender. “I don't want a sandwich.”

When it looked like we might not have a conversation, he said, “I'm real sorry about your grandparents. Where did they live?”

Then I did something crazy. In plain view of every hand at Southern Board, in a loud voice, I asked T. C. for a date.

No one was as surprised as Theodore himself. He became suddenly shy. “Sure,” he said, “I'll have a beer with you after work.” Then he turned away from me to eat his sandwich. While he ate, I watched the white T-shirt stretching over the muscle in his back, the two damp curls swirling above his ear. With a leap of faith, I allowed T. C. Curtis to become the man who loved the woman in every country song I had ever heard.

“H
E SOUNDS LIKE
a real fixer-upper,” said Drew, when I described T. C. to her over the phone.

“It's like negative capability,” I explained. “You know. John Keats, the poet? He said that negative capability is required to read poetry, or write it, or something. It's the willing suspension of disbelief.”

“Education is wasted on you,” said Drew. “Does he have a big wang?”

“I don't know!” I screamed, still embarrassed about the three balls. “We've only gone to second base.” Then more calmly I said, “I want him to fall in love with me.”

“Next time you hold his hand,” said Drew, “measure the distance between the bottom of his palm and the tip of of his middle finger.”

“What if he knows what I'm doing?”

“Louise, it's not supposed to be this hard for a girl to lose her virginity. Just focus.”

N
O ONE AT
the plant said anything to me about T. C., but they discussed me among themselves, shouting over the roar of the machinery whenever I walked by.

“What's that thing sticking out of Experiment's cap?” asked Polecat. “She don't have enough hair to make a ponytail. Smiley, don't you think she should cut that thing off? Now that she's old enough to date and all.”

“Hey Polecat,” said Smiley, stepping around me with a load of board. “Are you cold?”

“Hell, it ain't but a hundred degrees in here.”

“Well, Experiment's wearing gloves.”

“How much you think she weighs?”

“What I want to know is how much her daddy pays for her to go to that private school.”

They all tested me to see if I was smart enough to go to college. “Now listen, Experiment,” Polecat would say, climbing down his ladder. “Say you got a litter of six black pigs, and a litter of seven white pigs, and two of them black pigs gets the cough, but only one dies, and the dog eats four of them white pigs, but somebody trades you three black pigs for a lawn mower, how many pigs you got?”

When I gave the incorrect answer, he wanted to know what I studied at Bridgewater. The men circled me, curious.

“Latin? Who talks that?”

“Now Jack, you tell me what's the point in paying somebody to teach religion when the preacher does it for free.”

“Hell, anybody can cut up a cat. Rabbits is harder ‘cause you got to catch ‘em first.”

Jeremiah was the only one who asked serious questions about Bridgewater. He wanted his son to attend. “I've been saving up for eight years now,” he told me. “I want that boy to have an education.” Dutifully, I answered his questions about entrance exams, course requirements, and dress codes, but I didn't try to encourage him. Rudy Bloom had jumped off the Meshack Bridge at spring break, survived, and developed an ulcer. The other black kid, Franklin Harris, made the honor roll every semester, but he always ate lunch by himself. On the other hand, Gabriella Gubbel had shot herself, and she was white. Sometimes when I was working at the bailer, with my head stuck in the big mouth that chewed scrap board, I'd remember how we used to call out “Gabbygabbygabby! Gobblegobblegobble!”
just to watch her cover her ears in pain. I didn't know Jeremiah's son, but I wanted to protect him.

When Henry went to Red Cavern, Jeremiah told him not to worry, he would hold the fort. They called each other sir, shook hands while gripping each other's arms, and patted each other brusquely on the back. It was as close to a hug as they could get.

Although a long line of men stood above Jeremiah in the running of plant, he didn't trust them. For those two weeks, he appointed himself plant watchdog and special guardian to Louise. This was a difficult task because of the unspoken, unwritten rule that blacks had to stay at the back of the plant. He made excuses to tour the factory in a forklift, careful to stay on the circumference, and once he even cleaned the railroad, so he could keep an eye on Dopey, who was likely to fall into the slitter and ruin Southern Board's safety record. Whenever possible, he requested an extra hand on the bailer, certain that Raymond Patch would send me.

Once, I had asked Henry why the blacks worked at the back of the plant. He was driving us home from church, nosing the Buick LeSabre around a hairpin curve on Mount Zion. He slowed down to see if there were any new dents on the guardrail. Florida commented that the county needed to get out here and cut back the kudzu.

“Look at that,” Henry said, slowing down in front of a broken mailbox. Those rednecks knocked that sucker right over last night. Now why on earth anybody would get a kick out of driving by with a stick and hitting mailboxes is beyond me.”

“Henry,” said Florida. “She asked you a question.”

“I'm listening. Look! There's another one. The good ole boys had a real time up here last night.”

“They make a dollar less an hour,” I said. “All the machines at the back of the plant pay a dollar less an hour.”

“That's just circumstance, honey. There's no discrimination in it. Each machine requires a different level of skill, and the work pays accordingly.”

“Your father is prejudiced,” Florida explained.

A hundred yards from our driveway, he scowled and pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Dad, please don't.”

“You can't stop him,” said Florida. She pulled the
KEEP AMERICA CLEAN
sack from under her seat and handed it to him. “Get out and help him,” she said, so I tripped along in the weeds in my high heels, holding the sack open while he filled it with empty beer cans.

“Can you imagine the mentality of a person who just drives along and throws a beer can out the window?” he asked when we were back in the car.

“Joy riding,” Florida said grimly.

T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
at Smartt's Gas Station, T. C. bought a six-pack of Miller for himself, a six-pack of Heineken for me, and a bag of popcorn. “Maybe I'll take you to the movies sometime,” he said.

I could hear Drew saying “Oh thrill me,” but I was thrilled.

T. C. wore black sunglasses and looked slightly dangerous, wheeling the Monte Carlo along back roads. I popped a Kenny Rogers tape into his stereo, unleashed my ponytail, and drank
with abandon. Each time I finished a beer, I hung out the window and sailed a bottle through the air.

L
ATELY AT WORK
, Dopey had been singing “Good Hearted Woman.” As I threw boxes into the screaming mouth of the bailer, I sang with him.

In my mind, I lived out the seductive tragedy of my life with T. C. Curtis. It had all the appeal of suicide, but it was better because I would be alive to see the looks of shock and regret. I did not mourn the deaths of Daddy-Go and Grandmother Deleuth, not the way I mourned Roderick's death, but they altered my world. If my mind were a house, their deaths were like the removal of two large pieces of furniture. I continually stumbled into these blank spaces. It was unsettling. Where were they? At night, I wandered from room to room in Owl Aerie, feeling the silent space all around me.

Every evening, promptly at 5:00 p.m., Henry and Florida called. They passed the phone back and forth to each other, asking me the same questions: Did I have enough to eat? Did I remember to lock the doors and turn on the alarm? Was I lonely? I wasn't smoking in bed, was I? Was I getting to work on time? It was difficult to be late to work since Florida gave me a quick wake-up call at 6:00 a.m. on weekdays, but I managed a few times. On those days, Raymond Patch would step out of his office, wheezing, and watch me punch my time card. From the look on his face, it was clear that a woman could not do a man's job.

In the back of the plant, Jeremiah loomed like the shadow of Henry, bigger, darker, silent. Then, one day, he called me outside. We stood on a ramp, blinking in the strong sunlight. I had to shield my eyes to look up at him when he spoke.

“You ever seen a cat catch a rat?” he asked. On most men, the suit wears the man, but Jeremiah definitely wore his suit. Although he was a big man, he moved with the grace of a dancer; even his voice was a movement that seemed to throw off the cheap, pressed cloth. There in the sun on the hot metal ramp, he was present. He was himself, open and unafraid. He looked me in the eye. I looked at his polished black shoes.

“Never seen a cat catch a rat!” he cried. “Where you been?”

“Working,” I said.

“Uh-huh.” He broke a stem from a tall weed growing on the wall and chewed the tip. “Well, it goes like this: The ole cat smells him a rat and gets up real close, sniffing around. Then he starts playing with that ole rat. Course, he don't eat it right off. Naw, he jus' plays with it, chasing it into this corner, that corner yonder. He runs that ole rat back and forth, teasing it, see, until the varmit don't know backwards from forwards. Then you know what happens?”

I shook my head. How could he be this way, so plainly himself and unafraid? Like a king, a real one. It seemed almost rude. I glanced through the darkened doorway, into the humming green fog of the plant.

“Then he eats it,” said Jeremiah.

“The cat eats the rat.”

“Yes, indeed!”

Still squinting in the sunlight, I looked up at his gray temples. He had six children, and one who had died. He had a curtain over no window. I couldn't do that. I'd have to push the cloth back every day and touch the wall. I felt like an ole rat, scrambling for a way to outsmart him.

“What if I'm the cat?” I said. He chewed on his weed, considering
this. Finally, he said, “Well, wouldn't that be something,” and walked away.

N
O ONE BELIEVED
that I would actually bring T. C. to the house. The first time I invited him, he said, “Wear your bikini,” and stood me up.

I cried. At work the next day, he told me he was sorry, his aunt had to use the car. He lost my number.

“I'll make it up to you,” he said at the water fountain, standing so close that the toes of our boots touched.

“How about tonight?” I said.

That evening, as the red sun fell behind the pines, I hid behind a Chinese vase in the living-room window, watching the Monte Carlo curve around Owl Aerie's long driveway. The shiny black car looked evil parked beneath Roderick's old basketball goal. Slowly, the door opened. T. C. stepped out, swigging a fifth of tequila. For a few moments, he stood spraddle-legged beside his car holding the bottle in one hand, a flower in the other.

I was worried that he wouldn't be able to find the front door. Henry insisted that my dates come to the front door. Owl Aerie had seven doors to the outside, so Florida had helpfully made signs out of driftwood: front door, with appropriate arrows. The one boy who had sallied up Mount Zion and followed this maze had never returned. He was a skinny kid with blue skin and red hair, famous for wearing a bucket around his neck so he wouldn't throw up on people at parties. When he finally landed at the front door, Florida said, “You look just like my son,” and began to cry.

I let T. C. ring the doorbell twice. As soon as I opened it, he
swooped down and stuck his tongue in my mouth. He reeked of tequila and aftershave, but the biggest disappointment was his outfit. Instead of the faded Levis and white T-shirt he wore to the plant, with a pack of Marlboro Reds rolled up in one sleeve, he had dressed up in a pair of jeans with an elastic waistband, and a two-tone terry-cloth shirt. I smiled and took the rose he offered, which was wrapped in green tissue with a pink ribbon.

“I was going to get you a dozen,” he explained, “but I thought one would be more romantic.” He bent down to kiss me again, but I slipped through his arms.

“Would you like some champagne?” I offered. The Pepperses were not in the habit of drinking champagne, but I felt obligated to keep up appearances for my coworkers at Southern Board. I would have worn a tiara if I could have gotten my hands on one. The best I could do was a pair of diamond drop earrings, with a matching choker and bracelet, that I'd picked up Kmart that afternoon. Since it was my house, I was barefoot.

“You're beautiful,” T. C. said, reaching for my breast. Dodging, I suggested he accompany me into the living room for a cocktail, but he followed me right into the kitchen. When I stood on a chair to get the sorbet glasses, the closest thing we had to champagne glasses, he grabbed my butt. He took the glasses out of my hands and smashed me against his chest. “Let's dance,” he said.