Roxanna Slade Part 24

Of course I was stunned. What Negro and why? I couldn't help thinking of Roebuck Pittman, though I had no idea if she was still alive. I asked the young man if he needed a gla.s.s of tea. When he declined I went back in and tried to get Dinah ready for whatever hard news was bearing down on us.

Ten minutes later the sheriff himself, in Palmer's truck, pulled in.

And Palmer stepped right out strong and straight. I was just behind the curtains at the window.

The sheriff got out and, though his round face and little bright eyes were somber at the least, all he did was shake Palmer's hand and then go on to the deputy's car.

Palmer stood and watched them leave. There was no apparent blood on his white s.h.i.+rt or khaki trousers. His hands looked clean.

When he entered the back way, Palmer didn't so much as pause at the kitchen. He went straight to the bathroom, shut the door and stayed there a long time.

When he didn't come out, I walked to within two steps of the door. Water was running and I meant to knock and ask if he needed anything.

But his voice stalled me. "I'll be out in a jiffy."

Jiffy was the last word Palmer Slade was likely to use. He must have heard it on the

radio.

The sound of it scared me worse than a sheriff's car and the news. So I just turned and Dinah and I set out the food in the dining room and took our chairs. I'd only told Dinah everything was all right.

In a minute Palmer was with us, same s.h.i.+rt and trousers, but his hair was wet and freshly combed. He looked oddly younger and, once he'd said grace as ever, he heaped his plate with the chicken salad and my famous hot rolls. Then he said "Anybody mind if I dive in?"

I saw he'd removed his hearing aid but I smiled. "Be our guest."

Dinah was a few weeks short of age eleven, so she was boiling with natural questions. I tried to hush her with discouraging looks, but she wouldn't be stopped. She hadn't touched the food on her plate when she said "Sir, are you in trouble?"

Palmer wasn't looking and at first didn't hear her.

That slowed Dinah down. She looked to me. So I lowered my voice and clearly said "Please tell us what happened."

In thirty years I'd never seen Palmer's eyes water up, much less spill tears. But now he set his fork down, faced Dinah and me and let us watch him grieve for maybe half a minute. The water rolled steadily down his cheeks, and he never raised a hand to stop it.

I guess I'd lived through worse sights before, but I can't recall any. Neither Dinah nor I could speak a word.

Then at last Palmer said "You know I went in to meet old Simon on the courthouse bench as usual. He was late getting there which in itself was strange. But I waited peacefully for half an hour and then saw him coming. From fifty yards off I could tell he was drunk, more than tight anyhow. Twice he waved to me which he'd never done. So I was standing up when he got there. I decided not to mention his condition but figured I'd test to see what shape he was actually in. I said "You ready to help me load this saw?"'-- our biggest circular saw had been in for sharpening. Simon said "I got one question first." I said "Name it." Simon laughed outright--"Named money, named green-back dollars, boss man.

You owe me, white man." So my brain just clamped down tight on itself. And I hauled off and struck him cold in the face. My ring hit his right eye and popped it like a grape." The tears had gone on pouring while he talked.

I touched the back of his hand by his plate and said "All right. It's done at least." I wasn't trying to deny the gravity of what had happened. I was trying to put out the nearest fire. The major's signet ring was s.h.i.+ning like a fresh-lit torch.

But Palmer wouldn't let me. He pulled his hand from under mine and said "The sheriff just happened to be nearby. He and I drove Simon to the hospital bee-line." By then Palmer's eyes were set on Dinah as if he were begging her to take up the story and finish it somehow.

Brave as she'd always been, Dinah said "You blinded Simon--" It didn't sound remotely like a question.

Palmer said "I did. We got him straight to Henderson, but they had to remove the eyeball then and there. He's in the ward right now. I need to go back." He consulted his watch and ate a little more. Then with an awful frown in his eyes, Palmer raised his own napkin, covered his mouth and spat out the whole chewed cud in silence. Then quick and quiet as any killer, he was out the back door and gone on his own.

Till he got home at ten, I wondered every instant if he'd drunk more whiskey and might wreck himself. Surely that was why the sheriff drove him home. But no, he was safe and sober when he joined us again.

By then Dinah had worried herself to sleep, full dressed on the sofa in the living room.

The hours he was gone--four cast-iron hours --I'd also kept reminding myself that Palmer had never said one word of chastis.e.m.e.nt to me in my bad times, not even a whisper of disappointment. I was in our bedroom folding laundry and rolling his socks.

Palmer walked up behind me so silently that, even though I'd heard him at the back door, I was shocked when he said "I appreciate you still being here."

I literally laughed. The idea that I might have left him and our home was so preposterous. But when I turned he was standing there slack with both hands

open and empty at his sides, and he looked three or four times smaller than before.

He said "May I sit down?"

I said "It's your chair. This is your house, Palmer."

So he went to the rocker that had been Major Slade's and sat down heavily. When I'd asked if I could get him a sandwich and he'd refused, he let me go back to folding clothes. And then he said "I know you respect colored people."

"Some of them," I said, "just like the whites and reds and yellows."

Palmer said "Simon asked after you just now." I said "I hope you told him he's in my prayers."

Palmer nodded. "I took that liberty, yes."

"How's he doing by now?"

That normal question seemed to free Palmer slightly. He got to his feet, reached up for the cord and started the ceiling fan. He'd put what he always called ice cream fans in most of our rooms only that past spring, big wood-paddle fans such as ice cream parlors invariably featured. Then he stood in the midst of the floor and spread his arms to let the breeze wash him. Finally he sat back down and said "Simon's begging my pardon every second breath."

It slipped out of me. "You didn't accept his apology?" These years later that sounds like a question from the old middle ages.

Palmer stalled a good while and then said "Interpret that please. You're speaking in tongues."

I sat by the edge of the fresh stacked laundry at the foot of our bed. Then I explained that, while I didn't blame him one bit, I also couldn't feel that Simon needed even a trace of pardon.

Palmer seemed to take it calmly. He said "You're a.s.suming I owed him money--"

"Why else would money have been what he asked for?" Maybe that was too sudden a question to face Palmer with, but I'd known Simon for twenty-odd years. Simon had helped me with odd jobs a thousand times in the house and yard, and I'd never heard him breathe one vicious syllable.

Palmer sat back and raised his chin to the ceiling as if he'd find his answer spelled there. What he found was "See, I've owed Simon two hundred fifty dollars since late July."

I'd known that, at Simon's peculiar request, Palmer only paid him quarterly. But that much money was a lot back then. I said "What's been the hold-up?"

Palmer said "Poor business. I haven't wanted to worry you with it, but I've been short since right after Christmas."

I said "Darling, we've continued like normal." The last way I meant to sound was sanctimonious. I was just baffled that Palmer hadn't warned me to trim my spending in nearly nine months--not that I was ever lavish.

But he shut his eyes still facing the ceiling and said nothing more.

So I had to ask the one thing left before we could even try to sleep. "Are you in any legal trouble?"

"Of what sort, Anna?"

"For blinding a man."

That made Palmer look at me. And in the next minute before he could speak, this trail of feelings pa.s.sed through his eyes like clouds on a March day. At last he seized hold of half a smile and said "When was the last time you heard of a white man going to jail for harming a Negro? My father lost a leg in his twenties just so we could own them like pickup trucks. And as you well know, that four years of war barely scratched the surface of slavery. It's with us. We won."

As I was hearing that sentence, word by word, it seemed to last about an hour. And I kept praying that Palmer's tears would start again just to prove precisely where his heart lay in what he said.

But he'd cried himself dry. It was ten minutes later after he'd washed his hands, stripped to his shorts and pulled back the bedspread that he spoke again. He said "I'll put this in writing tomorrow; but so you know in case I die in my sleep tonight, I'm setting up a small fund that'll pay Simon's doctor bills and his wages till the day he dies. And so you can sleep or try to anyhow--I didn't accept his apology, no ma'm. I begged .his pardon and he gave it to me freely. If sometime between tonight and the grave you

can understand that, you drop me a line or tell me outright."

I told him I would and thanked him gently. In under a minute, like a hard-pushed child, he was deep asleep.

I had a good many dreams after that, all of them ending in bloodshed and noise committed by me in a light gray dress. I never mentioned them to anybody, not even Leela who'd become the person I confided in on the rare occasions when there was anything to confide (generally some minor complaint from the outskirts of menopause where I lingered for several years with no big trouble). And I never mentioned Simon's eye to Palmer again, not in any way, though what felt almost worse to me than the blinding itself was the fact that--three weeks later to the day--Simon drove his old truck up toward the kitchen door.

When Palmer went to meet him, Simon said he'd like his old job back if n.o.body else had it.

I was listening near the open window. And while Palmer had visited Simon almost daily in the hospital ward and then back home, I could hear that he was both shocked and glad to say he'd kept Simon's job open, sure--it was n.o.body else's.

I could gauge the miles and valleys of complications that my husband had had to crawl and scratch his way through in order to say that. And though Palmer Slade was fifty-one years old and looked much older in many ways, I recall thinking of him--that moment then with Simon in his eye patch standing in the backyard--as young and helpless in a way he'd never been before, not in my mind at least.

The two men worked together one more year. To me it seemed that nothing had really changed in their way of being together. And lately with all that's happened in racial matters, hopeful and horrendous, I've come to think there was one simple reason--one reason only--why Simon could ask for Palmer's pardon and then turn up with his dry eye-socket three weeks later and recommence work as if nothing had happened. And that reason was Truly nothing had happened and maybe never would to smash through that gla.s.s jar they were in-- Simon and Palmer every day of their lives.

Whatever, I know that when Palmer's final sickness began, it was Simon Walton he wanted around him most times. And Simon rose to the challenge as unquestioningly as he'd performed every human duty that Palmer requested through their long friends.h.i.+p--or more likely, love. Friends almost certainly couldn't have survived the gaps and troughs that afflicted both men, but any two people bound by love are forced to live on burning ground every day of their lives and still keep moving.

Any human who can't stretch his or her mind to understand such a tangled and unjust blessing between two races or s.e.xes or kinds almost surely should never try for love in their own life--and certainly should give up all idea of ever being married or having a child. After one single terrible fight, Palmer and Simon anyhow learned to occupy the same s.p.a.ce patiently. And they taught the skill to me--or the fact that such a kins.h.i.+p is possible anyhow, however I've managed to use that knowledge in my life since then.

It was a brain tumor, cruel in every way but one, and that way was speed. It went like a brush fire right through Palmer's head and into the night. Simon noticed it first. He and Palmer were estimating a tract of timber in the coastal woods way east of home. And as often happened they got separated in the woods and spent awhile apart. Simon got worried finally and began to call out for Palmer--they had a low whistle call they used; it generally managed to pierce Palmer's deafness. No answer whatever. Eventually though, just before dark, Simon stumbled into a small clearing.

And there stood Palmer blank-faced and trembling.

Simon told me he was so surprised by the sight that he stopped ten yards from Palmer and said "You getting a chill?" It was early October; there'd been an early frost.

Palmer said "I am." Then Simon said Palmer's face went "ashy as ashes." And Palmer said "Simon, what the h.e.l.l is my name?"

For more than a month, Simon kept that to himself. Then after I'd noticed a number of moments when Palmer seemed confused, I had to do something. At home what he showed me and Dinah was the same he'd shown Simon, the loss of names. I was

old enough myself to understand that names are the first things most minds lose.

I remembered mentioning that to Leela when Palmer forgot my name and Dinah's more than once, and Leela said "That's natural. Names are the first words people learn--Ma-ma, Da-da--so they lose names first."

That seemed sensible and I tried to hold onto it as an explanation of what was overtaking my husband, but then I'd find Palmer standing in the darkest corner of our bedroom with his face to the wall like a school boy caught in some mild mischief. The first few times I let it pa.s.s and crept out without speaking. But finally it looked so sadly forlorn that I went up behind him and said "Old friend, can I help you?"

For a minute he couldn't turn around. But at last he faced me looking almost as young as the first day I met him. And he said "You can get me on to my home as soon as possible please"--when there he stood in the midst of the only home he'd known since leaving his mother's.

That was when I managed to speak to Simon privately one morning before he drove Palmer to work. I told him exactly those pitiful words.

Then Simon finally told me about finding him adrift in the woods down east. He said "Miss Anna, we got to take him down to Duke's soon now." Duke's was what black people quite sensibly called Duke Hospital (because it had been endowed single-handed by J. B. Duke who all but invented cigarettes).

That did it for me. Without consulting Palmer or anyone, I called our family doctor first. And he set the grim last march into motion.

The very same night I calmly told Palmer that he and I had a doctor's appointment the next afternoon. Palmer just nodded, then rolled over and slept like a rock in his usual place beside me. Next morning he dressed without a word of complaint and got in the car with me and Simon when the time came to leave for the drive to Henderson. After that our doctor sent him on to Duke. Simon drove us down there the week before Thanksgiving 1952.

Augustus came from Rockingham where he and Daisy had recently moved with their first son and met us for the first day of tests. For most of that day,

Palmer seemed to know August and even managed to laugh at a few of the boy's old jokes. Then August's job called him back, but he phoned us each evening and calmed me a good deal.

Our family doctor had offered us no diagnosis, but he'd made the Duke appointment with a neurologist. As soon as I saw that final doctor's seamless face--he was young enough to be our child--I somehow knew we were on a downhill chute and wouldn't land safely. Not that the doctor was short on training or the skills that troubled nerves require, but I knew a face that smooth and untroubled would somehow bring us harder news than an older man who'd suffered himself and wasn't sapped still by youth or a sealed heart.

It took three days of painful tests but, after all that waiting in the presence of sad and stove-up strangers, it turned out I was right. Leela and Wil had come to our house to stay with Dinah while we were away. Palmer and I spent the nights at a widow's home near the hospital--a neat rented room. One of the black orderlies let Simon stay at his mother's house, but Simon would come to the widow's and fetch us at dawn and stay right with us till we finally got the results late on the third afternoon we were there.

The young man--Dr. Harrison Root--ushered us into a pale green cubicle and said it as straight as a shot to the forehead in any stockyard. "Mr. Slade, you almost certainly have a rapidly growing ma.s.s in your brain."

Why is the word ma.s.s the worst word of all in any hospital? Most people I know would rather hear gangrene or perforated ulcer. Anyhow when it hit me that instant, I know I let out a high little sound like some creature caught by the leg in a trap.

And the doctor looked at me with a frown as he went on reeling out his few options.

After the first words Palmer just folded in on himself like a withering leaf.