A Christmas Memory (7 page)

“He’s here,” I informed her for the third time. “Odd Henderson.”

“Then why aren’t you with him?” she said admonishingly. “That’s not polite, Buddy. He’s your particular guest. You ought to be out there seeing he meets everybody and has a good time.”

“I
can’t
. I can’t speak to him.”

Queenie was curled on her lap, having a head rub; my friend stood up, dumping Queenie and disclosing a stretch of navy-blue material sprinkled with dog hair, said “
Buddy
. You mean you haven’t spoken to that boy!” My rudeness obliterated her timidity; taking me by the hand, she steered me to the parlor.

She need not have fretted over Odd’s welfare. The charms of Annabel Conklin had drawn him to the piano. Indeed, he was scrunched up beside her on the piano seat, sitting there studying her delightful profile, his eyes opaque as the orbs of the stuffed whale I’d seen that summer when a touring honky-tonk passed through town (it was advertised as
The Original Moby Dick
, and it cost five cents to view the remains—what a bunch of crooks!). As for Annabel, she would flirt with anything that walked or crawled—no, that’s unfair, for it was really a form of generosity, of simply being alive. Still, it gave me a hurt to see her playing cute with that mule skinner.

Hauling me onward, my friend introduced herself to him: “Buddy and I, we’re so happy you could come.” Odd had the manners of a billy goat: he didn’t stand up or offer his hand, hardly looked at her and at me not at all. Daunted but dead game, my friend said: “Maybe Odd will sing us a tune. I know he can; his mother told me so. Annabel, sugar, play something Odd can sing.”

Reading back, I see that I haven’t thoroughly described Odd Henderson’s ears—a major omission, for they were a pair of eye-catchers, like Alfalfa’s in the
Our Gang
comedy pictures. Now, because of Annabel’s flattering receptivity to my friend’s request, his ears became so beet-bright it made your eyes smart. He mumbled, he shook his head hangdog; but Annabel said: “Do you know ‘I Have Seen the Light’?” He didn’t, but her next suggestion was greeted with a grin of recognition; the biggest fool could tell his modesty was all put on.

Giggling, Annabel struck a rich chord, and Odd, in a voice precociously manly, sang: “When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin’ along.” The Adam’s apple in his tense throat jumped; Annabel’s enthusiasm accelerated; the women’s shrill hen chatter slackened as they became aware of the entertainment. Odd was good, he could sing for sure, and the jealousy charging through me had enough power to electrocute a murderer. Murder was what I had in mind; I could have killed him as easily as swat a mosquito. Easier.

Once more, unnoticed even by my friend, who was absorbed in the musicale, I escaped the parlor and sought The Island. That was the name I had given a place in the house where I went when I felt blue or inexplicably exuberant or just when I wanted to think things over. It was a mammoth closet attached to our only bathroom; the bathroom itself, except for its sanitary fixtures, was like a cozy winter parlor, with a horsehair love seat, scatter rugs, a bureau, a fireplace and framed reproductions of “The Doctor’s Visit,” “September Morn,” “The Swan Pool” and calendars galore.

There were two small stained-glass windows in the closet; lozenge-like patterns of rose, amber and green light filtered through the windows, which looked out on the bathroom proper. Here and there patches of color had faded from the glass or been chipped away; by applying an eye to one of these clearings, it was possible to identify the rooms visitors. After I’d been secluded there awhile, brooding over my enemy’s success, footsteps intruded: Mrs. Mary Taylor Wheelwright, who stopped before a mirror, smacked her face with a powder puff, rouged her antique cheeks and then, perusing the effect, announced: “Very nice, Mary. Even if Mary says so herself.”

It is well known that women outlive men; could it merely be superior vanity that keeps them going? Anyway, Mrs. Wheelwright sweetened my mood, so when, following her departure, a heartily rung dinner bell sounded through the house, I decided to quit my refuge and enjoy the feast, regardless of Odd Henderson.

But just then footsteps echoed again.
He
appeared, looking less sullen than I’d ever seen him. Strutty. Whistling. Unbuttoning his trousers and letting go with a forceful splash, he whistled along, jaunty as a jaybird in a field of sunflowers. As he was leaving, an open box on the bureau summoned his attention. It was a cigar box in which my friend kept recipes torn out of newspapers and other junk, as well as a cameo brooch her father had long ago given her. Sentimental value aside, her imagination had conferred upon the object a rare costliness; whenever we had cause for serious grievance against her sisters or Uncle B., she would say, “Never mind, Buddy. We’ll sell my cameo and go away. We’ll take the bus to New Orleans.” Though never discussing what we would do once we arrived in New Orleans, or what we would live on after the cameo money ran out, we both relished this fantasy. Perhaps each of us secretly realized the brooch was only a Sears Roebuck novelty; all the same, it seemed to us a talisman of true, though untested, magic: a charm that promised us our freedom if indeed we did decide to pursue our luck in fabled spheres. So my friend never wore it, for it was too much a treasure to risk its loss or damage.

Now I saw Odd’s sacrilegious fingers reach toward it, watched him bounce it in the palm of his hand, drop it back in the box and turn to go. Then return. This time he swiftly retrieved the cameo and sneaked it into his pocket. My boiling first instinct was to rush out of the closet and challenge him; at that moment, I believe I could have pinned Odd to the floor.
But
— Well, do you recall how, in simpler days, funny-paper artists used to illustrate the birth of an idea by sketching an incandescent light bulb above the brow of Mutt or Jeff or whomever? That’s how it was with me: a sizzling light bulb suddenly radiated my brain. The shock and brilliance of it made me burn and shiver—laugh, too. Odd had handed me an ideal instrument for revenge, one that would make up for all the cockleburs.

In the dining room, long tables had been joined to shape a T. Uncle B. was at the upper center, Mrs. Mary Taylor Wheelwright at his right and Mrs. Conklin at his left. Odd was seated between two of the Conklin sisters, one of them Annabel, whose compliments kept him in top condition. My friend had put herself at the foot of the table among the youngest children; according to her, she had chosen the position because it provided quicker access to the kitchen, but of course it was because that was where she wished to be. Queenie, who had somehow got loose, was under the table—trembling and wagging with ecstasy as she skittered between the rows of legs—but nobody seemed to object, probably because they were hypnotized by the uncarved, lusciously glazed turkeys and the excellent aromas rising from dishes of okra and corn, onion fritters and hot mince pies.

My own mouth would have watered if it hadn’t gone bone-dry at the heart-pounding prospect of total revenge. For a second, glancing at Odd Hendersons suffused face, I experienced a fragmentary regret, but I really had no qualms.

Uncle B. recited grace. Head bowed, eyes shut, calloused hands prayerfully placed, he intoned: “Bless You, O Lord, for the bounty of our table, the varied fruits we can be thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day of a troubled year”—his voice, so infrequently heard, croaked with the hollow imperfections of an old organ in an abandoned church—“Amen.”

Then, as chairs were adjusted and napkins rustled, the necessary pause I’d been listening for arrived. “Someone here is a thief.” I spoke clearly and repeated the accusation in even more measured tones: “Odd Henderson is a thief. He stole Miss Sook’s cameo.”

Napkins gleamed in suspended, immobilized hands. Men coughed, the Conklin sisters gasped in quadruplet unison and little Perk McCloud, Jr., began to hiccup, as very young children will when startled.

My friend, in a voice teetering between reproach and anguish, said, “Buddy doesn’t mean that. He’s only teasing.”

“I do mean it. If you don’t believe me, go look in your box. The cameo isn’t there. Odd Henderson has it in his pocket.”

“Buddy’s had a bad croup,” she murmured. “Don’t blame him, Odd. He hasn’t a notion what he’s saying.”

I said, “Go look in your box. I saw him take it.”

Uncle B., staring at me with an alarming wintriness, took charge. “Maybe you’d better,” he told Miss Sook. “That should settle the matter.”

It was not often that my friend disobeyed her brother; she did not now. But her pallor, the mortified angle of her shoulders, revealed with what distaste she accepted the errand. She was gone only a minute, but her absence seemed an eon. Hostility sprouted and surged around the table like a thorn-encrusted vine growing with uncanny speed—and the victim trapped in its tendrils was not the accused, but his accuser. Stomach sickness gripped me; Odd, on the other hand, seemed calm as a corpse.

Miss Sook returned, smiling. “Shame on you, Buddy,” she chided, shaking a finger. “Playing that kind of joke. My cameo was exactly where I left it.”

Uncle B. said, “Buddy, I want to hear you apologize to our guest.”

“No, he don’t have to do that,” Odd Henderson said, rising. “He was telling the truth.” He dug into his pocket and put the cameo on the table. “I wish I had some excuse to give. But I ain’t got none.” Starting for the door, he said, “You must be a special lady, Miss Sook, to fib for me like that.” And then, damn his soul, he walked right out of there.

S
o did I. Except I ran. I pushed back my chair, knocking it over. The crash triggered Queenie; she scooted from under the table, barked and bared her teeth. And Miss Sook, as I went past her, tried to stop me: “Buddy!” But I wanted no part of her
or
Queenie. That dog had snarled at me and my friend had taken Odd Henderson’s side, she’d lied to save his skin, betrayed our friendship, my love: things I’d thought could never happen.

Simpson’s pasture lay below the house, a meadow brilliant with high November gold and russet grass. At the edge of the pasture there were a gray barn, a pig corral, a fenced-in chicken yard and a smokehouse. It was the smokehouse I slipped into, a black chamber cool on even the hottest summer days. It had a dirt floor and a smoke pit that smelled of hickory cinders and creosote; rows of hams hung from rafters. It was a place I’d always been wary of, but now its darkness seemed sheltering. I fell on the ground, my ribs heaving like the gills of a beach-stranded fish; and I didn’t care that I was demolishing my one nice suit, the one with long trousers, by thrashing about on the floor in a messy mixture of earth and ashes and pork grease.

One thing I knew: I was going to quit that house, that town, that night. Hit the road. Hop a freight and head for California. Make my living shining shoes in Hollywood. Fred Astaire’s shoes. Clark Gable’s. Or—maybe I just might become a movie star myself. Look at Jackie Cooper. Oh, they’d be sorry then. When I was rich and famous and refused to answer their letters and even telegrams, probably.

Suddenly I thought of something that would make them even sorrier. The door to the shed was ajar, and a knife of sunshine exposed a shelf supporting several bottles. Dusty bottles with skull-and-crossbone labels. If I drank from one of those, then all of them up there in the dining room, the whole swilling and gobbling caboodle, would know what sorry was. It was worth it, if only to witness Uncle B.’s remorse when they found me cold and stiff on the smokehouse floor; worth it to hear the human wails and Queenie’s howls as my coffin was lowered into cemetery depths.

The only hitch was, I wouldn’t actually be able to see or hear any of this: how could I, being dead? And unless one can observe the guilt and regret of the mourners, surely there is nothing satisfactory about being dead?

Uncle B. must have forbidden Miss Sook to go look for me until the last guest had left the table. It was late afternoon before I heard her voice floating across the pasture; she called my name softly, forlornly as a mourning dove. I stayed where I was and did not answer.

It was Queenie who found me; she came sniffing around the smokehouse and yapped when she caught my scent, then entered and crawled toward me and licked my hand, an ear and a cheek; she knew she had treated me badly.

Presently, the door swung open and the light widened. My friend said, “Come here, Buddy.” And I wanted to go to her. When she saw me, she laughed. “Goodness, boy. You look dipped in tar and all ready for feathering.” But there were no recriminations or references to my ruined suit.

Queenie trotted off to pester some cows; and trailing after her into the pasture, we sat down on a tree stump. “I saved you a drumstick,” she said, handing me a parcel wrapped in waxed paper. “And your favorite piece of turkey. The pulley.”

The hunger that direr sensations had numbed now hit me like a belly-punch. I gnawed the drumstick clean, then stripped the pulley, the sweet part of the turkey around the wishbone.

While I was eating, Miss Sook put her arm around my shoulders. “There’s just this I want to say, Buddy. Two wrongs never made a right. It was wrong of him to take the cameo. But we don’t know why he took it. Maybe he never meant to keep it. Whatever his reason, it can’t have been calculated. Which is why what you did was much worse: you
planned
to humiliate him. It was deliberate. Now listen to me, Buddy: there is only one unpardonable sin—
deliberate cruelty
. All else can be forgiven. That, never. Do you understand me, Buddy?”

I did, dimly, and time has taught me that she was right. But at that moment I mainly comprehended that because my revenge had failed, my method must have been wrong. Odd Henderson had emerged—how? why?—as someone superior to me, even more honest.

“Do you, Buddy? Understand?”

“Sort of. Pull,” I said, offering her one prong of the wishbone.

We split it; my half was the larger, which entitled me to a wish. She wanted to know what I’d wished.