Enduring (13 page)

“How’s the water?” Every’s dad remarked.

“Is that
my
bathing suit you’re a-wearing?” Barbara asked her sister.

“Why, I never!” exclaimed Latha’s mother.

Latha’s dad said, “I figgered you’uns would find some way to git together.”

Mandy pointed at the conspicuous bulge in the crotch of Every’s swimsuit. “Looks like you caught a fish.” Several of them thought this was funny and laughed, but the general mood was of anger.

When they got to the Dill’s cabin, Latha’s mother said, “Where’s your clothes, girl?”

“In Every’s room,” Latha said.

Mrs. Bourne marched with Latha into the room, where Latha’s clothes and Every’s were jumbled together on the floor. The bed had not been made, and those starchy stains which were probably from what came out of Every were all over the sheets, and Latha’s mother scowled at them. “Did you sleep here?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t,” Latha said.

“Don’t you fib to me!” her mother hollered.

Mr. Dill drove them the rest of the way to Latha’s house, where he said, “My boy is going to get his hide tanned.” Latha’s mother saw the sheet still hanging on the clothesline. She might never have noticed the faint bloodstain that didn’t wash out unless she was looking for it. But now she was looking for it.

Latha did not see Every again. Mandy reported that she was a witness when Mr. Dill took a leather strop for sharpening razors and clobbered Every with it until the blood was running down his legs. Latha’s father took a common hickory switch and sliced up Latha’s legs until she begged for mercy. Her mother said, “I don’t want ye to even
look
at that boy ever again!”

Latha washed the blood from her legs and put some mercurochrome on the worst places. For three days she couldn’t walk, but then she managed to limp off up to her playhouse. Rindy was there, pouting because she hadn’t seen Latha for days and also in a foul mood because of the favoritism her mother always showed to her younger brother Lewis, giving him extra dessert and pampering him. She paused from listing her grievances against Lewis to notice Latha’s legs, and asked, “What happened to you?”

So Latha began at the beginning and told Rindy the whole story. Latha wanted to avoid boasting but she couldn’t help noticing the expression of awe and envy on Rindy’s face when Latha described how she had lost her virginity, and then Rindy was full of questions about the whole thing. At length Rindy observed, “S’funny, but you don’t look no different…except for them cuts on yore legs.”

From then on, there were two major topics of talk at the playhouse: the thrill of sex and the botheration of Rindy’s kid brother, Lewis. One day, out of the blue, Rindy said to her, “I double-dawg dare ye to do it with Lewis, just to prove you aint a virgin no more.”

Latha had always accepted Rindy’s dares. Her experience with Every was becoming a distant memory, of which she dreamed at night and daydreamed about too frequently. This challenge struck her as a chance to have some sexual pleasure again, so she accepted it. Lewis was only ten, but being one of the Whitter boys he probably had a really useful dinger. One Saturday afternoon Rindy asked her brother if he’d like to stick his thing into a girl’s twitchet, and he was more than willing, practically drooling, so she brought him up to the playhouse, blindfolding him with a bandanna for the last quarter of a mile so he wouldn’t know the route to their secret hideaway. Latha was waiting for this first male ever to be in their playhouse. She was eager to do it, and impatient, and they lost no time in getting Lewis to take off his overalls. He might not be capable of coming but he sure had an erection. Latha lifted her dress and pulled down her panties and lay on the pallet, and Lewis climbed atop her. But during the time he fumbled and fidgeted and poked and prodded without managing to enter her, the thought struck her that in a way she was being unfaithful to Every, even if she had been forbidden ever to see him again. So she squirmed out from under Lewis and declared, “I’m sure sorry, but I reckon I just caint do it.” Lewis threw a tantrum and called her a whore, and threatened to go tell his mother. Rindy stopped him and said, “Oh, hush, Brother. If all you want is a hole, you can have mine.” And she took Latha’s place on the pallet, and they were both unmindful that Latha just sat watching them. Latha was fascinated, and reflected that maybe watching it is more of a delight than doing it. She wondered if she and Every had made the noises that these two were making. Once again Lewis was probing and poking and prodding without getting it in, and Latha was about to suggest that Rindy should get on top, but at that instant Lewis grunted hard and Rindy hollered and he was in.

Of course he couldn’t come, at that age, but he sure tried, although the pallet was getting bloody and Rindy came more than once. Lewis could have kept it up for the rest of the afternoon, but Rindy pushed him away, saying he was commencing to hurt her. Lewis wanted to try Latha again, and she had become so heated up just watching them do it that she almost consented, but thoughts of Every entered her mind again and kept her from it.

Rindy asked Latha to come with her and back her up when she went home and showed her mother the blood on her legs and told her mother that Lewis had raped her. Latha wasn’t going to tell a lie even for her best friend but Mrs. Whitter never came right out and asked her. Maybe her presence was enough. Mrs. Whitter said, “I just knew it was bound to happen, but I’m right sorrow it was Lewis.” Simon Whitter, Rindy’s dad, took a strop and clobbered Lewis senseless although the boy yelled his head off, protesting that Rindy had put him up to it.

Rindy reported to Latha that Lewis wasn’t able to do anything for a week. Latha learned a new word from Rindy: revenge. That is when you get back at someone for something they did to you. It was a fearsome word, and Latha spent some time wondering how she might get revenge on her father and mother.

There was at this time a young man from Jasper named Sewell Jerram who had been born and raised in Stay More but went off to the county seat to seek his fortune. He came home to Stay More every chance he got, and he eventually took to wife a Stay More girl, Irene Chism. Nobody knew for sure just what Sewell (everybody pronounced it “Sull”) did for a living, but whatever it was, he owned one of the first automobiles to travel these backroads. Sull became friends with the Whitter boys, Rindy’s older brothers, brothers of Ike Whitter, the only villain in the history of Stay More and one day he offered to put them all in his auto and take them off to see the sights of Jasper.

Rindy threw a fit because she wanted to go too, but of course her mother wouldn’t allow her to ride off with a married man even if she had her brothers for chaperones. Latha remembered the day at the playhouse almost as well as she remembered the seduction of Lewis because Rindy came to the playhouse seething with rage and began throwing things around and breaking up some of the stuff in the playhouse, all the while swearing the worst dirty words that she knew. Latha couldn’t calm her down. She just had to let the rant run its course.

Thus, when much later—months maybe—Rindy remarked that she was determined to get into Sull’s bed, Latha’s first reaction was to ask, “What’s he done to ye that ye want to git back at him for?” Since it wasn’t Sull’s fault that Rindy’s mother wouldn’t let her go on the excursion to Jasper, a motive of revenge wouldn’t apply. Rindy laughed and said no, she just had a huge desire for Sull because he was a big grown man and would really know how to do it and make her feel real good. “Rindy,” Latha said in exasperation, “he’s married to Irene Chism, and has been for years and years, and besides he’s nearly old enough to be your father.” But Rindy didn’t care, she was determined to have sex with him, and he had said certain things to her that made her think he wanted her as much as she wanted him, even if she was only thirteen years old.

Rindy’s brothers were spending all their time in Jasper, never allowing Rindy to go along. It turned out they were involved in nothing illegal, but in something called politics. Latha had learned in the “civics segment” of her class at school that politics involves getting certain men elected to office. Sull Jerram had decided to be a candidate for county judge, which is not a man who presides in a courtroom with lawyers and all that but just a kind of manager who handles all the business of the county. Rindy’s brothers had gone to work for him, traveling to all corners of the county to drum up votes for him, and to get folks ready for the election, which Sull won, despite the fact that everybody in Stay More voted for his opponent because they thought Sull Jerram was dishonest and disreputable.

If Sull really was a bad man, Rindy refused to believe it, and she hung around him whenever he came to the Whitter place, and he took notice of her and made compliments and kept telling her that one of these days he’d just take her away. Latha began to be jealous, because Rindy wasn’t spending much of her time at the playhouse any more. Rindy was a very good-looking girl, not nearly as beautiful as Latha, but in her own way she was “cuter” than Latha. There had been times in their growing-up together when they would constantly badger each other: “You’re purtier than me.” “No, you’re purtier than me.” “No, you’re the purtiest’un.” “Am not. You’re the purtiest’un.” Now, when Rindy was almost fourteen and Latha was still thirteen, Rindy had filled out more than Latha, with a shapelier figure and much larger breasts.

Judge Sull Jerram became just about the most powerful man in the county, and the base of his wealth was moonshine whiskey. His wife’s family, the Chisms, for many years, ever since the first Chism came from Tennessee in 1839, had been making a really superior kind of sour mash whiskey that was known far and wide as “Chism’s Dew.” There was a kind of jape that Chism’s Dew was so good you could smell the feet of the boys who ploughed the corn. Latha herself had tasted it, when Rindy brought a small Mason jar of it to the playhouse and claimed that drinking it would make you forget all your troubles and sorrows and poverty. It was fiery, and Latha gagged on a tiny sip and spit it out, but eventually managed to swallow some, and then to swallow enough of it to discover that it actually made her feel light-headed and no longer aware of her troubles and sorrows and poverty.

The Chisms who made the whiskey lived right over the ridge from the Whitters and the Bournes, and the sheep who made such a pretty picture as they grazed in one of the hillside pastures were the property of Nail Chism, one of the brothers. Latha and Rindy had seen him several times, a tall, fair-haired, rugged, well-favored but shy young man who played a sweet harmonica. He would have preferred spending all of his time tending his large flock of sheep, but the Chisms needed him at the still, and he was especially needed now that the market for Chism’s Dew had suddenly taken off, because all the politicians down in Little Rock had learned of its excellence and magic. According to the story, there was such a demand for it that all the stoneware jugs and demijohns of Newton County had been used up and they had to resort to bean pots, cream pitchers, wash pitchers, chicken fountains, soup tureens, punchbowls, compotes, gravy boats, even slop jars or thundermugs—anything that would contain the liquid.

And then the Chisms ran out of corn. For a while the Ingledew gristmill down by Swains Creek continued to grind out cornmeal from whatever corn they could find, and Latha’s father made a little cash money for the first time in ages by selling all the hard-dent corn in his corncrib, although there would be nothing to feed the pig in the brunt of winter. Then all of the available corn in Stay More valley had been used up. It was sheep-shearing time, and Nail Chism took the wool to market at Harrison in the Chism’s big wagon (the wagon had been constructed by Every’s father). Nail’s father, in cahoots with Sull Jerram, persuaded Nail to conceal under the wool a load of Chism’s Dew to deliver to Sull’s agent in Harrison, and then to bring back from Harrison whatever corn or cornmeal he could find. Although it was going to take Nail several trips to get all of his fleece to Harrison because of the extra room taken up by the Chism’s Dew, he was the salvation of the bootlegging operation, and he didn’t mind. He took his kid brother Luther for company.

They had one run-in with a Boone County sheriff’s deputy on a return trip, who stopped them and correctly surmised that all the sacks of cornmeal they were carrying were destined for Chism’s still. He warned them not to bring that cornmeal back to Harrison in liquid form.

Driving back into Stay More they met Judge Sull Jerram in his automobile. He didn’t stop, he only waved, and he had a girl with him, and the girl was Dorinda Whitter, on her way to Jasper at last.

Nail recognized her. He recalled the time when he had been walking from the village up to his sheep pasture and he stopped to pick a Golden Delicious apple from somebody’s orchard, and right after that he ran into Dorinda Whitter with her friend Latha Bourne. Rindy Whitter had said to him, “Nail, we need for you to settle a dispute. Which one of us two gals is the purtiest’un?”

Nail looked them over real well like he’d never seen them before. He took note of Rindy’s ample bosom and of Latha’s well-turned limbs. He declared, “That aint a fair question. Both of you gals are the purtiest creatures in all of Newton County and maybe far beyond too. Ask me which is purtier, the sunrise or the sunset? It depends on the weather.” And he refused to declare a winner of the contest, although he gave his apple to Latha. She assumed he meant for them to share it, so she let Rindy have several big bites of it.

Word got back to Irene Chism Jerram, Nail’s sister who was married to Sull, that her husband had been seen in the company of Dorinda Whitter, cavorting around Jasper. She asked Nail if it were true, and her brother said it was, a sad thing because Dorinda Whitter wasn’t but thirteen years old. Nail told his sister that he had had his fill of her husband and didn’t intend to run any more bootleg whiskey for him.

Then Nail confronted Sull and told him that he’d had enough, and he didn’t aim to run any more goods for him. Sull said he was sorry but there wasn’t nobody else but Nail who could do it, so Nail didn’t have no choice in the matter. Nail told him he wanted him to quit courting Dorinda Whitter. Sull laughed and asked Nail if he himself was sweet on her. Nail replied that he wasn’t but he was sweet on his sister Irene and he didn’t want Sull treating his wife like that.