Driftless (49 page)

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted to be someone who could make things right, but I never was.”

“How my father turned out wasn’t your fault.”

“Then you don’t understand. We were close. We did everything together and he needed me.”

“You were a child yourself,” said Winnie.

“Without my help, he did the best he could,” said Rusty. “That pretty much ends all I have to say. We can go now.”

Their trip back to Words was without incident, except when Rusty laid his pack of cigarettes on the seat between them and Winnie threw them out the window.

“Who made you my judge?” barked Rusty.

“Jesus,” said Winnie.

“I’ll just buy more.”

“Maybe so,” said Winnie. “But even if you don’t cooperate, I still have to do my part, don’t I?”

Despite himself, Rusty laughed. His own daughters had never dared to talk to him that way. As Winnie climbed out of the cab, he again watched the movements of his brother in her.

“I’ll see you again,” said Rusty.

“Please give me some time,” said Winnie. “This isn’t easy.”

THE COUNTY FAIR

T
ODAY, VIOLET COULD FEEL HER AGE HANGING ON HER LIKE a heavy coat. In addition to her chest and back hurting, she simply felt old, which didn’t exactly hurt but involved negotiating a seemingly endless reiteration of the familiar in order to move between one moment and the next.

When the smoke alarm went off for the third time she took out its battery.

This was an extremely important day, a landmark of late summer. For as long as she could remember, the Words Friends of Jesus Church had gone to the Thistlewaite County Fair, handing out pocket-sized New Testaments and selling pies, cakes, jellies, jams, cookies, and crafts.

Violet’s peach pies were famous for their golden crusts and sweet, tropical savor. She always sold as many as she could bake, and more than half the funds raised for evangelical missions came out of Violet’s oven. The secret of the filling, once described as “wildly fruity,” lay in a special admixture of apricot juice and basswood honey. This year, Pastor Winnie announced they would double the price and she made a new sign: Violet Brasso’s Heavenly Peach Pies, $18. “It’s for a good cause,” she said. “And they’re worth it.”

It was also the annual meeting of the secular and religious worlds, which for Violet had increasingly come to resemble a war. Each year the army of secularism had grown bigger and stronger, until the Words Friends of Jesus Church’s red-and-white-striped booth was the only Christian encampment on the entire grounds.

The fair had changed in her lifetime from a congenial community gathering to an anonymous encounter with people who hardly knew each other. The language of shared piety—the bond that had once glued Thistlewaite County together—had changed, and now
there was nothing that resembled a bond of any kind. Their booth had gradually become surrounded by amusements, attractions, and delights with no redeeming value, as if it were tiny Judaea inside the vast Roman Empire.

To the north, the beer tent—nonexistent during the early years of the fair—had grown to the sprawling black canvas monstrosity that now stretched all the way to the grandstand where the raucous bands performed their ear-splitting music. Behind them was the Ferris wheel, from whose dizzying heights the cores of caramel apples, cotton candy stalks, and the sodden remains of Sno-Kones rained down on the top of their booth. (In the previous year corncobs had been added to the airborne trash, and consequently the Farmer’s Daughter’s Sweet Corn tent and its open tubs of melted butter and quart-sized aluminum salt shakers hanging from rafter strings had been relocated a hundred yards away.)

The arcade entrance stood directly to the south. There, unshaved men with open shirts baited passers-by to bet on throwing dull darts into half-inflated balloons, with made-in-China stuffed animals as prizes. In the narrow alleyway, 4-H youngsters led livestock to and from the show barns, the animals’ gleaming, hulking bodies blemish-free except for hard-to-see injection sites near their tails.

Across the dirt midway were the sideshows. Freaks and hawkers. Airbrush artists painting lewd T-shirts. Flea markets selling ormolu trinkets, used pornographic videos, posters, Nazi memorabilia, greasy oil lamps, cheap cigars, antiques, and ordinary rubbish.

Last year, a group of Madison lawyers called something like PROPRE (People Really Opposed to Public Religious Expression) filed a lawsuit to bar the Friends of Jesus Church from participating in the fair but were denied an injunction. They had also attempted to do away with all religious music, clearing the path for a week of uninterrupted C&W, hard rock, and heavy metal. But because of long-standing church connections on the county fair board, this had also failed and the ninety-year-old rule mandating religious music on Sunday held.

This year, the Straight Flush had been hired to play for an afternoon. Though they were normally a country band, they also claimed
to know traditional religious songs. Pastor Winnie had at first objected, arguing that a bar band should not even be considered, but after learning they were the only musicians available, she relented.

Violet dressed Olivia in her most attractive summer outfit, but her depression seemed no better. She did not even want to get out of bed. There were holes in the spaces between things, she claimed, and out of them poured an Egyptian darkness.

As Violet baked pies, Olivia sat in the living room, alternately staring through the windows and working to correct her embroidery, which had turned out badly. Apostle John, sitting next to Jesus at the Last Supper, looked like a wolverine. And the more she tried to correct him, the more like a rodent and the less like an apostle he became.

“I’m not going,” she said and threw the needlework on the floor.

“Yes you are,” said Violet, making room for her fourteenth pie on the crowded kitchen table and standing back to admire the hot, steaming collection.

“I’m not.”

“Yes you are. It’s unhealthy to stay inside. If you’re don’t come people will think I’m not taking good care of you. There, only two more to go. Pastor Winnie will be here in an hour to help load these up, and I’m taking Trixie. Do you think you could ride in the back seat?”

“You can’t take that dog.”

“Of course I can. You remember three years ago when a man shook his fist in Pastor’s face? Our booth needs protection.”

“Winnie provoked that argument,” said Olivia.

“That’s not true. Pastor was just defending the Holy Bible—standing up for God’s Word.”

Olivia scoffed. “She picked a fight and you know it. She can be very truculent when she’s in the mood.”

“Olivia,” admonished Violet, “I don’t see any good reason why you can’t see the good in good people.”

“Oh, shut up.”

By the middle of the afternoon all of Violet’s pies had been sold. The red jams and oatmeal cookies were also going well. The humidity
remained high, but a breeze out of the north helped people stay even-tempered.

So far, there had been no arguments with anyone from PROPRE and the new (and larger) John 3:16 banner could be read all the way down to the miniature ponies. Even Pastor Winnie seemed almost relaxed, and she just looked the other way when a well-dressed couple bought two dozen cookies and a crocheted pot holder and then refused to take a New Testament, which was free with any purchase.

The band was much better than many had feared, playing the standard religious songs with both reverence and skill.

“We should tell them their music is appreciated,” said Winnie to the eleven other women inside the booth. “Though I’m not fond of electrified instruments, I think they’re doing an excellent job.”

“I’ll come,” said Violet, along with five others.

Winnie pushed Olivia up the midway toward the grandstand. Violet walked beside them with her white dog opening a wide path in the crowd. Five other women, all in their seventies, came behind, leaving the older ladies, Mildred, Amnesty, Florence, and Pauline, to manage the booth.

They crossed in front of the long, crowded beer tent without major incident and had reached the benches in front of the grandstand when the hairs along the white dog’s back rose up like spikes. From behind the flea market a bald-headed man with a huge black dog walked toward them, and rather than go in the other direction when he saw Violet’s dog, he came straight ahead.

“So we meet again,” he said, grinning at Olivia.

Violet said, “Excuse me, please take your dog away from here.” She pulled on the leash in an attempt to reorient Trixie.

Flanked by towering speakers, the band hit the first chord of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms” and sailed into a loud and lilting rendition, with the keyboard player singing the first verse.

A white pickup loaded with sweet corn pulled onto the midway and came toward them. Behind the wheel, July Montgomery was looking for the Farmer’s Daughter’s Sweet Corn tent. It wasn’t where he remembered it.

Trixie lowered her head and began to fight the leash.

The black Tosa bared its teeth and the bald man looked down with a pride bordering on menace. He took a step closer.

The other women from the booth stood in a semicircle near the stage. One of them shouted something to Winnie, but the music was too loud to make it out.

The driver of the white pickup was looking out the side window for the Farmer’s Daughter’s Sweet Corn tent.

Her attention riveted on pulling Trixie away from the grandstand, Violet could neither hear nor see the approaching truck and was unaware that she was about to be hit.

The band reached the final chord change in the second verse and in a crescendo of amplified sound the drummer, lead guitar, and bass set up the second chorus.

For Olivia Brasso, who could see what was about to happen, horror and urgency conspired to create something resembling timeless tranquility. Inside this inexplicable eternity, she watched Violet at the moment of her disaster, her bones about to be shattered, her flesh disfigured. Struggling with her uncooperative pet, she seemed so old, frail, and oblivious—so helpless, comic, and pathetic in her losing battle to preserve her dignity and at the same time control her pit bull.

And then Olivia became acquainted with the irrational certainty that sometimes causes even cowards to crawl from their lifelong hiding places of their own accord and act as if mortality had no hold over them. As though sprung from a trap, Olivia leaped from her wheelchair, jumped over a low bench, and ran seven paces headfirst into Violet. She knocked the leash out of Violet’s hands and drove the heavier woman all the way under the black tent, where they fell together, splattering paper cups of beer across the top of a picnic table.

The pickup continued, with July still looking for the sweet corn booth.

Everyone in the beer tent stood up and applauded.

The blond female could be heard singing the melody, supported by lower, harmonic male voices.

Trixie, twenty pounds heavier than she was six months earlier, tore into the black dog with a joyous ferocity.

The bald man called for help getting the dogs separated but could not be heard over the music.

Tears ran down Winnie’s face.

She had seen a miracle.

MAKING OTHER ARRANGEMENTS

V
IOLET DROVE HOME FROM THE FAIR WITH HER BLOODSPLATTERED dog next to her on the front seat. She did not speak to her sister in the back seat. In the driveway, Violet pulled the wheelchair from the trunk and opened it for Olivia.

Olivia hesitated, then shoved the wheelchair aside and walked into the house. Violet followed, pushing the empty chair up the ramp.

“I’m going to hose off the dog,” said Violet, and went outside.

When she returned, Olivia had set out tea and was sitting in her wheelchair next to the table, her fingers fidgeting along the edges of her cup.

Violet sat down and sipped her tea.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” asked Olivia.

“The pies went well this year. I was afraid people wouldn’t pay the higher price. But they all sold.”

“I’m not talking about the pies.”

“I’m afraid Trixie may have seriously damaged that other dog.”

“I’m not talking about Trixie.”

“What should I say?”

“You could have been killed.”

“Yes, Olivia, I’m glad you found a way to show me.”

Olivia’s fingers walked along the rim of her cup. “What are you talking about?”

“The antibiotics and, well, you know.”

“You knew?”

“Of course. What did you think? All the things you leave around, climbing up and down stairs at night, exercising in the park, eating like a horse, the muscles in your legs. What did you think?”

Olivia’s face turned ghostly, angry gray. “Why didn’t you say something?” she demanded.

“You weren’t ready.”

Olivia pushed her tea away and stood up. “I can’t believe this! You knew all along?”

“Of course. What did you think? I’ve never minded taking care of you. I’ve always told you that.”

Olivia frowned and sat back down.

The dog scratched on the door. Violet let her in and returned to the table.

“Oh, by the way,” said Olivia.

“What?”

“I knew you knew.”

“Olivia, sometimes you amaze me. Nothing will ever make you grow up.”

The dog returned to the door and whined. Violet let her out.

“And by the way,” said Olivia as Violet sat down again, “I think this would be a good time to talk about making some changes around here.”

“What kind of changes?”

“I want Wade to live with us.”

Violet drank the rest of her tea without speaking, her eyes moving from one area of the room to another, as though imagining what they might be like in the future. She carefully centered her empty cup in the saucer and said, ”I’m sorry, Olivia, I can’t agree to that. It’s asking too much.”