Dovey Coe (6 page)

Amos, on his part, made a collection of signals he used to talk to Tom and Huck with. I remember one afternoon, me and Amos was up on Katie's Knob looking for crampbark, which is good for soothing aches and whatnot. Amos clapped his hands three times, and Tom and Huck took off running.

“You trying to scare them dogs away?” I asked Amos. “That's too bad, because I don't reckon Daddy'll get you any more if you chase these ones off.”

Amos grinned and rolled his eyes, to let me know what he thought of my jokes. A couple of moments later, Tom and Huck was back at our feet, and then just as quick they was off again. Amos nodded in the direction they'd run off to, and we followed them fifty yards through the woods, catching up with them at a bend in the creek where all sorts of weeds and flowers was growing. Though we didn't find any crampbark there, we did find a right nice patch of foxglove good for picking.

The way I seen things, us Coes had everything we needed in this world. Some might see us as poor, but that was their problem. We had saved
up the money to send Caroline to college, which is more than many a richer family in town had done for their children. Parnell Caraway, for one, would not be packing his bags to go off to an institution of higher learning anytime soon. And if he had his way, nor would Caroline.

To my way of thinking, Parnell was a prime example of riches not necessarily making a man satisfied with his life. He had just about everything he could want, plus a little extra. He had silk shirts and ten pair of shoes, a genuine cowboy hat from San Antonio, Texas, and an automobile his daddy bought him secondhand. But for all them things he had crowding up his life, he still walked around looking for new, shiny things to add to his collections, and Caroline was one of the items on his list.

For a while there, in those first days of August, it felt to me like all them I known were under a spell—except for me and Amos, of course. And Caroline, well, she floated through her days as though she might take to the air at any minute. The main picture I have of her from that time is her long hair whipping out the window of Parnell's automobile as they drove down the road and off to Asheville. She was living the grand life of her dreams, and Mama and Daddy was letting
her do it. Oh, I'd see Mama worrying her hands when Caroline drove off in that car, but she was staying true to herself and keeping out of Caroline's business. Myself, I thought this foolishness ought to be stopped, but I'd said my piece once, back in July, and no one seemed to heed it.

Parnell took Caroline's change of feeling toward him as a victory. I could hardly stand to look at him, but he took every chance he could to get me by myself and give me a hard time, now that he thought he had won this particular war. One afternoon, when Caroline was helping Mama put supper on the table, Parnell turned to where I was sitting across the porch from him. I was deep involved in
Robinson Crusoe,
which is a right good story by Mr. Daniel Defoe.

“Why you read all them books for, Dovey?” he asked me, running a hand through his silky dark hair and trying to catch his reflection in the front window. “Why ain't you inside learning how to make supper so you can get yourself a man someday?”

“Maybe I don't want to get myself a man someday,” I told him, not bothering to look up from my book.

“Well, I reckon that might be a good thing, come to think of it. I imagine a feller would have
a hard time warming up to you. It's a shame you didn't get none of Caroline's good looks.”

“What's it to you, Parnell?” I asked, giving him the evil eye.

“It ain't a thing to me. I just been wondering if there's a reason you don't ever take a comb to your hair or put on a dress from time to time.”

“Maybe it's 'cause I'm afraid if I start making myself look all pretty, you might lose your fool head and fall to worship at my feet,” I said. “Fact is, you're going to need somebody new to be in love with once Caroline comes to her senses.”

I seen I struck a nerve.

“You're crazy, Dovey, if you think for a minute I'd ever give you a second look. And Caroline ain't going to change her mind about me, I'll tell you that much. She knows a good thing when she sees it, I'd say.”

I turned back to my book, saying, “Now that's a matter of opinion, ain't it, Parnell?”

Parnell stood to go into the house. “Don't you get smart with me, Dovey Coe,” he said, his voice low and even. “I ain't got the patience for it.” The door slammed loud behind him.

I put down my book and stretched out my legs, mulling things over. When it come to rich
and poor, Parnell and his kind stood on the other side of the line from us Coes, that was for sure. And as far as I was concerned, he ought to have stayed right where he belonged.

I
t was at dinner on a Friday evening that Parnell got his own self in some serious trouble. He and Daddy had been making a joke about this and that, just acting the fools for the amusement of all seated at the table, when Parnell let loose his fatal words.

“Now tell me seriously, John,” he said, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye, “did you really think Caroline was going to go on to teachers college? Or was you just playing along?”

Daddy give Parnell a curious look. “Why, Parnell, you make it sound like she's done gone and changed her plans. To the best of my knowledge, them folks still got my money over there, so I reckon
somebody's
going to college.”

Parnell slapped his knee and hooted a bit. “Good God, John, ain't you been paying attention? Caroline ain't going anywhere.”

“What're you saying, Parnell?” Caroline asked from across the table, a bit of love still left in her voice. “We never said anything about me not going to college. We never talked that way.”

“Now, Caroline, honey, be reasonable,” Parnell said, trying to get serious about the matter. “It don't make sense for you to go now. You ain't going to be a teacher. You're going to be Mrs. Parnell Caraway and sit in the lap of luxury all day.”

Maybe if Parnell had left it at that, maybe if he and Daddy hadn't been cracking jokes and being silly all evening, the situation would have worked itself out. But Parnell couldn't leave things alone, and on that particular evening he was of a mind to laugh at everything.

“Besides, Caroline,” he said, and here's where he started to giggling again, “were you really serious about being a teacher? I mean, I ain't ever seen you pick up a book of your own volition. I ain't even sure you can read.” Now that right there really broke old Parnell up.

You just keep talking, Parnell, I thought to myself as I slathered about an inch of butter on a
biscuit. For the first time in weeks, I seen me a little glimmer of hope. Parnell had just made himself a grave error, talking to Caroline that way. Like I've said, she was sensitive about folks thinking she weren't anything more than a pretty face. Caroline had some pride, and Parnell had just wounded it. He might think he could sweet-talk his way out of it, but I had my doubts.

That's why it come as no surprise to me that Caroline agreed right away the next day when Daddy suggested we have a going-away party for our future teacher. Oh, I tell you, me and Amos was practically dancing all over the house at the news. It told us all we needed to know. Caroline had left the idea of Parnell Caraway in the dust and was going back to her old dreams. If Caroline was going to get out of town, it would be by her own devices, not in Parnell Caraway's car on an afternoon trip.

Later that afternoon, I got even more proof of this when Caroline was setting the table for supper and casually remarked, “Folks think I'm good-hearted, and I reckon I am, but that don't mean a man can't set my blood to boiling by saying the wrong thing.”

“You talking about Mr. Parnell Caraway?” I asked, handing her the silverware, a grin breaking across my face.

“Oh, I believe you know exactly who I mean,” Caroline replied, grinning her own grin.

Caroline still acted as sweet as could be to Parnell. He kept coming to the house every day, and they both pretended like that dinner conversation had never taken place.

“Oh, I do think you're going to enjoy the party,” she told Parnell one afternoon while he was sitting on the porch steps watching me and Caroline pluck dead petunia blooms from Mama's garden. “It's always such a treat to have a party at the end of the summer, don't you think? I'm hoping Mama'll make some strawberry ice cream. I think this will be the best end-of-the-summer party anyone's ever given!”

I noticed that Caroline didn't once refer to the party as her going-away party. There weren't no doubt in my mind she was up to something, I just couldn't figure out what.

“That sounds fine,” Parnell agreed, using a toothpick to get some dirt from under his nails. “You better not eat too much ice cream, though. I don't want you losing that pretty figure of yours.”

“Now don't you worry yourself over that, Parnell,” come Caroline's cheerful reply. “I aim to keep my looks for as long as I can.”

“Why you always got to say such things, Parnell?” I asked, tossing a bunch of the wilted blossoms toward his feet. “Caroline ain't your prize sow you're going to take to the fair so you can win a ribbon, you know.”

Caroline patted me on the shoulder. “Oh, don't take Parnell the wrong way, Dovey. Besides, if I was Parnell's prize sow, I reckon he'd want me to eat till I was too big to fit in the front door!”

I shook my head. I'd known Caroline long enough to know that this cheerfulness of hers weren't for real. But I had no idea what she was up to.

Once I got wrapped up in making the plans for the party, I stopped giving the situation between Caroline and Parnell so much thought. We set the date for a few days before Mama and Daddy was to drive Caroline down to school. Luther McDowell and Gaither Sparks would play music so folks who was of mind to could dance and carry on, and Mama and MeMaw would fry up a batch of chickens to be served with slaw, biscuits, greens, and whatever anyone else cared to bring to supper.

A week before the party, Mama and Caroline sat down at the kitchen table and made out a list of who all to invite.

Caroline chewed on the end of her pencil, thinking out loud. “'Course, we'll invite all the McDowells and the Sparkses, since Luther and Gaither will be playing. And Patty Brown and all her folks, so Dovey can dance with Wilson.”

“I ain't dancing with no one, lessen Daddy asks me to,” I said, trying to get her away from the idea that me and Wilson Brown was going to dance the night away together.

Mama smiled. “You dance with whoever you want, Dovey, though I expect you to use your good manners when you say no to an unwanted suitor,” she said in her best ‘I am teaching you how to be a lady' voice. “Caroline, write down the Byerses and the Mitchells, honey. They been real good to you. Oh, and don't forget Pastor Bean and Coreen Lovett.”

Caroline wrote down the list of names in her careful script. “I can't think of who else to ask,” she said when she was done.

“What about Parnell and his folks?” Mama asked, sounding surprised that Caroline hadn't brought them up.

“My goodness, I can't believe I forgot old Parnell,” Caroline said, looking sly. She added the name “Caraway” to the list.

“We ain't inviting Paris!” I exclaimed. I weren't
about to put up with Paris Caraway for an evening, and I'd just as soon skip Homer, Lucy, and Parnell, too. “Why, that'll ruin everything, Mama,” I complained. “Them Caraways come up here and everyone's going to spend the entire time looking at their feet and then go home early.”

“They ain't going to do no such thing, Dovey,” Mama replied. “Besides, I don't rightly see how we can overlook them, seeing as Parnell's practically lived here all summer. It wouldn't be right not to invite them.”

“Can we at least not invite Paris?” I asked.

Mama laughed, thinking I was fooling, but I weren't doing no such thing.

M
e and Amos spent a good amount of time that next week getting things ready. To the best of my remembrance, us Coes had not had a party before, if you didn't count grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins coming over after church on Easter Sunday for dinner, or to drink cider and eat popcorn and cookies on Christmas Eve. Mostly what me and Amos known about parties come from the books we'd read.

Daddy said the most helpful thing we could do was get the barn cleaned out before he started
building a platform for Luther and Gaither to play music on. I liked spending time in the barn, for the good smell of it, in part—the hay kept stored up in the loft and the sharp scent of the kerosene Daddy used to keep his tools clean. Them smells took me back to the days when nobody cared if I was acting like a lady or not, when I spent hours every day watching Daddy fix things up and being his little helper.

By the day before Caroline's party, me and Amos had gotten the barn swept and Daddy's tools and such put over to the side of the barn in an orderly fashion and covered up with some old blankets so they wouldn't be an eyesore. There weren't much left to do but to commence decorating the place. Here's where being more girlish than I naturally was would have come in handy, I reckon. If I'd been studying up on ladylike activities, I might have been able to sew some curtains to hang over the windows or some such thing.

It was Amos who come up with the idea of making paper chains to hang all over the place in a festivelike manner. We got us a mess of colored paper and old comic books we'd read so many times that we could probably draw our own copies, and we cut them into colorful strips to make chains with.

“This will be a sight to see,” I told Amos as I added a loop to the chain I was working on. It already stretched halfway across the barn floor.