Roxanna Slade Part 5

Within three steps Fern was there beside me. I knew not to look at him right that instant--my knees might have failed me--but he fixed on me, and we went a good ways before he said "I'm staying here with you."

"Father may need you, Fern."

"Rox, Father can kiss my rusty a.s.s."

I knew Fern loved Father in his own way, so I didn't blame him. I forged on forward thinking I could help old Coy spread dinner. No way on Earth we wouldn't all have to sit down now and eat our path through a big hill of food.

We did exactly that. The Slades as

I've said had no near neighbors. But people of every kind and color from the darkest ebony through browns and tans and high bright reds to the palest white somehow heard from miles away--Larkin was cherished far and wide--and food had come in by horse, goat cart, car and foot. The goat cart carried a single old white woman; and when she got out to deliver her bacon, she couldn't have stood more than four feet tall. But none of them tried to stay for long.

So by the time the seven of us took our places, and Major had blessed it in his peculiar way (saying only "Lord, we accept these rations"), the table was burdened with smoked ham, chicken cooked every way known to humans, plus one baked guinea hen, a platter of fried streak-of-fat-streak-of-lean, eight or ten different strains of home-canned vegetables, the last of Palmer's summer tomatoes (he was the gardener and had a cellar still full of the green ones he'd pulled before the first cold spell).

Even harder to believe there were ears of corn he'd somehow managed to keep till now. Also biscuits, hot rolls, cornbread fried in small thin pones with lacy edges and a dish of delicate spoonbread the size of a growing baby's tub. Pickles and relish of every description and eventually six kinds of cake and endless pies. Likewise iced tea, spring water, several wines made from the local fruit and the cut-gla.s.s tumbler of strong apple brandy that n.o.body touched or drank a drop from but Major Slade.

It has been a minor but strange fact of life that since childhood, however down and deep blue I get, my appet.i.te has mostly stayed healthy. I'm no kind of glutton, and I've never gained more weight than I could carry easily. But fresh and thoughtfully put-together food has been one of life's unfailing pleasures down to this day when I eat alone. And sitting there at the Slades' wide table with Lark no more than minutes underground, I swallowed what calmed me far more nearly than any known drug.

Which is not to say that for one cold moment I failed to know what we'd just done, what I'd just lost and might never replace. That still didn't keep me from studying Palmer the best I could without seeming rude. I had clear memories of the two different voices that had said he might need me.

So the rest of that day I worked at the sight of his face and eyes, his tall strong body, and wondered what I could mean to him in days or years to come.

Ferny dropped out of school and stayed there till Christmas. I stayed two weeks. I'd have gladly stayed longer if that had seemed fitting. One of the really hard problems for girls in those days--white girls whose fathers had at least decent incomes--was idleness, pure bottomless idleness in a quiet house in a quieter town that offered you nothing whatever to do that you didn't personally think up and carry out.

Whatever foolishness any politician or TV preacher tries to peddle today about human families as the peak of all striving, the highest of every human achievement, let me tell you plainly that in my youth and young womanhood, the families of many people thought to be decent as bands of angels were nothing but factories for driving souls crazy or still more evil than their hateful mothers or fathers.

And that big claim--but dead earnest--doesn't even mention the brothers or uncles who could use their younger kin like side meat. And even if all your people were saints, the lack of anything solid for young white respectable women to do would leave a girl so bone-shattering bored that she might easily turn out a demon of world-sized meanness, just for something to do with the endless silent hours of frost or broiling swelter.

Everybody who had two dollars a week to spare for a cook had a good one in the kitchen. The cook also helped out with the heavy housekeeping. Every morning she'd sweep the indoors and often the yard. (almost everybody had too much tree shade to grow any gra.s.s, so yards consisted of packed dirt or sand with occasional ivy and rosebushes.) She'd make and change beds and empty the slopjars first thing every morning.

My parents went to their graves with no trace of indoor plumbing. That was not necessarily a sign of poverty on anybody's part. Many well-off respectable people didn't want "that dirty stuff" indoors. So the "garden house" would stand fifty yards off through the open backyard. At night or in bad weather, we used white china slopjars in our rooms, otherwise the

privy.

What was left by way of work for the housewife and any young daughters of the family was fairly slim. You could make up your own bed if you really insisted; you could take your sweet time getting sponge-bathed and dressed. Your hair alone could take half an hour to brush, comb and plait. Then you might have, as I did, a little light daily duty.

Mine was to gather all the kerosene lamps that had been used the previous night and clean them. That involved wiping down four or five fragile gla.s.s chimneys with old newspaper, then tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the dirty wicks, drying any oil which had dripped down the sides. That could take three-quarters of an hour for four or five lamps if you got them as clean as Muddie expected.

Once they were spotless, though, your daily ch.o.r.e was finished. You weren't expected to handle the oil itself. Father insisted that he fill all lamps just before dark. He'd seen a black girl catch on fire in his childhood, and he had a great horror of it happening again. Depending on what their mothers knew and wanted to teach, some girls learned sewing or other handwork. But Muddie could scarcely thread a needle, so Leela and I never tackled much more than darning a sock or anchoring a b.u.t.ton.

Anyhow once you'd done your morning ch.o.r.e, then you were free for however many hours were left till preparations started for that day's dinner. Dinner as I've mentioned was the midday meal, the main event. You might have no job at all in the kitchen with the cook and your mother doing the work, or by ten or eleven you might need to undertake some modest task such as sh.e.l.ling peas and stringing beans or brewing tea strong enough to half dissolve the spoon. Then you'd eat with the family and--if you were normal for your time, place and color--you took off your dress and had an afternoon nap, or you sat upright in a padded chair and snoozed a few minutes, or you walked into town for some small need like hairpins or stockings.

Then you had the shank of the afternoon to survive till suppertime dawned. Supper was mostly a matter of dinner leftovers or cold food in summer, and the black cook would stay on to lay it out attractively and wash up afterward. (she could generally take the remnants home for however many

children, and that const.i.tuted a genuine supplement to her slim pay.) Leela and I frequently volunteered to help with the was.h.i.+ng, not so much because we were filled with pity but again to move the clock onward toward bed.

Evenings you spent playing cards with the family if they weren't fanatical Baptists or Presbyterians scared of a blistering eternity in h.e.l.l. From late March till early November, you pa.s.sed most evenings on the porch in the dark rocking aimlessly and listening to talk-- mostly older people talking but sometimes entertaining harmless boys who might stop by and every so often invite you to the picture show. Or if all else failed, you'd maybe read old ladies' magazines off in a corner like some wretched hermit that n.o.body cared to know.

You also kept up a ferocious correspondence with practically every distant person you'd met. The postal service really worked in those days, so you'd write most every distant soul you knew with detailed accounts of the family menus, the weather conditions, not to mention excruciatingly detailed reports on any man that had so much as breathed your name. And all that of course with the world outside--even our tame town--full of sickness, hunger and desperate loneliness that you might have set your mind to relieve in whatever small way.

We were Christians after all, or so we told ourselves every Sunday from ten o'clock till noon. But no, not one of us ever did anything more actively charitable than feeding some former cook on her deathbed or sending old clothes to a burnt-out family. My eyes were very slow to open on the full extent of black people's suffering and the dreadful poison of our neglect. And I confess, with grievous shame, that I never did one kindly act to an actual stranger--black or white--before the Depression when tramps turned up.

Leela had a more active brain than mine. She read a good deal and would tell in agonizing particulars the plots of stories she was reading or dreams she'd had till you were forced to think up some fake emergency and leave the room. Still I've always known how wasted her keen mind was in our circ.u.mstances, and I've never forgot that it was Leela who said "Every woman who's kin to us

talks about nothing but food and family."

And though I never had Leela's smartness nor her quick wit (in time she'd do me a lifesaving deed), I often shared in silence her bone-deep fatigue from hearing the same two topics explored in endless variations that meant less than nothing in the scheme of things. I mean for instance Muddie and any of her women friends could talk nonstop for three-quarters of an hour about the proper way to slice a tomato, though it was the cook who did more than ninety percent of all slicing. They could likewise retell for the nine thousandth time a story of some obstetrical mishap or outright tragedy from forty years past that they'd still not drained the interest from.

To be fair of course I can say that few men had more interesting work or conversation, though they did have jokes and local friends outside the family. My father sold dry goods, plain men and women's clothing and farm machinery every day of his grown life but Sunday. Neither of my brothers ever did a week's work that challenged the excellent minds they possessed. And it wasn't the fault of any man I knew. My brothers' problems with work came later as I think I've mentioned, though with more education they might have done better.

Almost n.o.body in our part of the world, men or women, attended college. Doctors and lawyers were the main exceptions, though the older lawyers had often just "read law" with some old attorney, then put out their s.h.i.+ngle--well trained or not. Even the white and reasonably paid men had by no means all finished high school. It was no shame then. Whole parts of the county were literally out of the reach of possible schools, ten or fifteen miles off when children had nothing but their own two feet or an old blind mule.

So unless men were geniuses sent by G.o.d and fully equipped to lead boys to battle or compose church music or experience angels back in the woods and take dictation that proved they were prophets, they seldom fell into interesting jobs. The main advantage men had over women came in two simple forms. They could leave the house every morning and stay gone till sunset or after; and so far as I know, not one of them ever had to bear or nurse a baby.

Also more than a fair share of men were the holders of the family purse strings. When it came to rest or spare time to think or the slow backwash of

love that a mother may get from most of her children, men in general were sadly worse off. They wound up showing it too in midlife--the toll they'd taken in the outside world--and they went on showing it ever more gravely if they lived to get old. Then they tended to sit and turn quickly to stone, bent shattered stones with no word to say for all they'd seen and likely tasted.

In my two weeks up by the river with the Slades, I didn't have all that much new to do. But I offered my help right on through the day, and Coy or Miss Olivia or Major seemed glad to have it. The strange part of course was being there in the heart of Larkin's life with him gone for good. Little pieces of him were everywhere--objects, small things he'd used every day or prized. Again I hadn't known him long enough to feel as deeply bereaved as I privately thought I ought to be, but I did slowly move into a kind of dreamy feeling he'd reappear any day now, and then we'd decide if we meant what we'd said on the edge of his death.

Beyond that the best thing that happened in those two weeks was having my first substantial sight of a grown white woman's life that looked worth living. Miss Olivia had impressed me from the start with her looks, her power over everybody round her and a curious absolutely frank whiff of mischief that could sometimes turn into very near malice. But I watched her like a hungry child through the days and nights I was first there with her. No question she spent the biggest part of the day and night on household business.

Major was plainly long past running an operation as complicated as a wide river farm with three or four tenants, five big families of the Slades' ex-slaves and more than a few square miles of timber that were only just starting to be sold off to the stinking paper mills that had opened downriver--so near you could smell them on any warm evening. I was not wrong then in seeing Miss Olivia as herself a manager of military stature.

With a few more like her, the South might have done a lot better in the war, though I've never been one to wish we'd succeeded. From the time I turned eleven years old, when the Civil War was not far behind us, I'd silently figured out--from people's stories of Southern glory and fame and starvation,

not to mention worse--what an idiot waste of everything it was. It didn't take a genius to recognize the wrong, just a watchful child with a child's sense of fairness.

But with all the duties that kept her moving from before dawn till bedtime, Miss Olivia had the rare ability to use little sc.r.a.ps of time that other people treat as pointless waste. She'd have half an hour in the midst of the morning and would go through the yard to the separate building that was Major's farm Office and sit there reading a scene from Shakespeare or six poems of Sh.e.l.ley's.

Or she'd work at memorizing miles of verse by Tennyson or James Russell Lowell.

Then she'd say it back to us in the evening after supper when everybody gathered by the big iron stove.

That fall was colder than fall mostly is. And in the long evenings we tended to sit together talking aimlessly and listening to Miss Olivia roll on in her rich voice, holding us close by sheer force of will, her great dark eyes and whatever story she chose to tell. They almost always involved b.l.o.o.d.y death or cold starvation. And often as not, she'd add the perfect recitation of some Scotch ballad of cutthroat revenge or some ghost story she claimed to have witnessed face-to-face by way of ill.u.s.trating her power and the claims she made to deserve our attention.

She could also pause if she had eight minutes before her next duty and play the boxy old parlor piano, finer music than I'd ever heard in those quiet days before home radios and nearby concerts. Her style was old-fas.h.i.+oned-- she strummed all her chords--but it showed deep feelings on any mailer of love and death. I've known her to sit ten minutes at least in utter silence at the stained keyboard, her eyes shut firmly. Then she'd raise her beautiful hands from her lap and play some melody she'd just composed. Or so she claimed and I had no cause to doubt her. I've never heard any of them played elsewhere and can still hum the tunes to three of the finest.

Miss Olivia was also known, so Palmer told me, to keep a diary every day of the year. It was locked in a cupboard in the separate Office. More than once I caught her gazing at something--a hawk in the sky, the major's peg

leg stretched out before him or often the side of Palmer's face, even Ferny's eyes. And once alone with her out on the porch, I asked what she did with what she stole through her eyes (i'd even caught her watching me closely in quiet moments).

She laughed very pleasantly to hear it called theft, but she gave my question some actual thought and finally said "I write down every fact about life in a book I keep. I've kept it since girlhood."

I said "What for?"

And kindly still she looked down at me like the saddest lunatic she'd ever met. "Oh to exercise the mind G.o.d gave me, and maybe some child or great-great-great-grandchild a century from now will find my thick book of endless work and learn something new about the roots of his blood."

I truly didn't know so I asked her on the spot. "You and the major have grandchildren now?"

Miss Olivia said "Major does by his first wife. They're all grown and scattered. But I'm still bereft."

It slid out of me as natural as breath. "Put your hopes on Palmer." Then I almost literally died of shame to have offered such private advice to an elder.

And for ten seconds Miss Olivia looked shocked and mad. But then she gave her pure laugh again. "I'm actually banking great hopes on you for a whole tribe of children."

Under the fire of my blush I kept quiet. "You and Palmer," she said. "In matrimonial circ.u.mstances to be sure." She was watching the side of my face as closely as if it were her last map to bliss.

Children had more than crossed my mind of course, children with Palmer. The voices I'd heard in the night and my vision had led that way. But through the two weeks I'd been with the Slades, Palmer had said no more than a hundred words to me till the night before I was due to leave. Up till then he'd have already left in the morning by the time I was up, and often he didn't come home at night. Sometimes the dogs would have disappeared with him, so I a.s.sumed he was hunting in the woods. But he never brought home any game he'd killed. And when finally I asked Miss Olivia where he went, she said "That's a question I never ask a man. Not

since I got good sense anyhow."

By then I was frank in wanting everything Miss Olivia would tell me. I said "Why not?"

"Well first because it's a need men have to wander in secret with the trust at least that n.o.body's looking. And second maybe because I've had occasion to ask and be cut to the bone by a truthful answer. I'm not necessarily speaking of Palmer--I have no notion where Palmer takes himself when he's left my sight. I'm referring to other men further back in my time. When I was a girl even more than now, some white men spent a share of time with black women. The second year I was married to Major, I asked him once where he had been when he hadn't showed up for two nights and three days. He didn't need more than two hot seconds to find his answer and pitch it right at me--"I've been out gorging on what I don't get here.""

The words came to me as strange as Spanish. I'd literally never heard such meanness before even at second hand, not at home or in school-- meanness or honesty--so in my confusion I gave a high laugh.

Miss Olivia had never looked more in earnest when she said "It burned out my curiosity, I tell you. And once the burn scarred over and faded, I've gradually accepted being happier than most, most women I know anyhow."

To this late date still I've never recalled one lie Olivia Slade ever told me or one foolish claim she made in my presence. There were numerous hard words and gestures from her when I'd let her down as I did more than once, and there were the terrible times after my marriage that I'll tell about, but otherwise there was never sufficient cause for complaint--not from me, not ever.

And even today with a world of women in outside jobs and flying to Mars--doing things no women from my time could dream of, much less perform--I've run across no one single woman who gave me Olivia Slade's sense of power, not even any First Lady on TV. It was less than steadily merciful strength but strength all the same, a force that would never pause in its course to hear you say the word No or Maybe to any serious need of hers.

That particular conversation took place the day before I was planning to head beck home. So it was

fresh in my mind when Palmer turned up at noon to eat dinner. He'd been gone since sunup with most of the dogs. I don't know whether it was some kind of spite or just a form of ignorance in me, but there at the table in sight of his mother I asked Palmer what he'd learned since breakfast. I think I meant it jokingly. What was there to learn in a world he'd explored every square inch of already?

He took his own time, then looked right at me and said "Well I finally achieved my purpose."

By then I'd realized the ground was shaky, so I asked nothing else.

But Ferny said "What would that be, O Wise One?" Fern liked Palmer well enough but without the wors.h.i.+p he'd felt for Larkin. Since we'd been there Fern had spent his time driving the major down back roads the old man hadn't seen for years. Fern said they were reliving Major's young life, and he thought that was easing the old man's sorrow.

Palmer never let go of his hold on my eyes but he answered Fern. "The Wise One has finally discovered a perfect place to show Miss Anna."

It startled me a little. I wasn't even sure he'd ever called my name, so I broke his gaze and looked to his mother. If anything was wrong or too strange, I knew her face would show it at once.

But she was smiling slightly toward Palmer. Then she said one word--"Montezuma?"

Palmer nodded.

Major said "That's too hard a trail." Miss Olivia said "Not so. This girl's tough as leather."

I wasn't entirely flattered by that, but I tried to keep smiling.

Palmer looked to Major. "Too hard, I'm sure, when you were a boy. But that was eight hundred years ago." He didn't mean it harshly, and he half grinned to prove it.

By then Fern was grinning too.

And Major gave his paralyzed laugh that sounded like somebody bringing up lumps of coal from his belly.

Palmer pushed back his chair to stand, and he faced me again. "Can you be ready to ride a horse in under ten minutes?"

I had no riding clothes of any sort and couldn't remember being on a horse in recent years.

Miss Olivia faced me. "I can fit you out with something decent." Her calm was no more rea.s.suring than all the male grins. She turned to Palmer. "I can have her ready in half an hour." From the set of her firm mouth, you might have thought she had a set of Joan-of-Arc armor to strap to my limbs.