Enduring (37 page)

All of these men, especially Doc Swain, not only furnished the names for her tomcats (and the one named Colvin was sometimes permitted to sleep on her feet at night) but also furnished the dramatis personae for an intense fantasy life that she had begun while incarcerated at the state hospital and which she would continue for the rest of her life. If she had known, by reading any of the modern literature on the subject, that nearly all women have such fantasies, she might have been less shocked at herself, but she often reflected, after a particularly wild and abandoned fantasy, that it was quite possible she was crazy after all. And yet she never said or did anything that was zany. Until she decided to write her sister Mandy a letter, Latha’s life was conservative, conventional, and uneventful. She had her pleasures, her substitutes for a sex life, although she had not made herself go over the mountain a single time since once early at Lombardy Alley when her swoon had greatly alarmed Mrs. Cardwell at a time when the woman needed her for something or other. On Sundays when the store was closed she liked to take her cane pole and go up Banty Creek to fish. She loved sunperch fried in cornmeal, but that wasn’t her main motive. Her main motive was just to get out into Nature and become part of it, and then to experience the thrill, not too far removed from sex although she never thought of it as such, of hooking a fish and playing it in.

Most women in Stay More did not fish, and Latha’s activity fed the gossip mill. Sometimes a man would try to follow her, but she knew some spots on Banty Creek that were impossible to reach except for the nimble-footed and, once-reached, very secluded. She enjoyed solitude above all else, especially after a week of dealing with customers and postal patrons, and helping the illiterate fill out their orders to Sears Roebuck. If the handsomest man in creation, on a silver horse, had shown up while she was fishing, she would have run and hid.

Some people swallowed by solitude manage to turn off their minds, to allow no thought to penetrate their isolation. But Latha’s mind never slept for a moment, and it was during one of her fishing trips that she began to think again of her child Sonora, and to compose the wording of her letter to Mandy.

As soon as she got home and gutted and cleaned her day’s catch of fish and put it in the icebox, she washed her hands and visited her store to purchase from herself a box of stationery. In her ledger under “Sold To” she wrote “me.” It was only forty-eight cents. She took a clean sheet and wrote “Stay More, Ark” at the top with the date, and then: “Dear Mandy.” She studied that for a good little while and decided there was nothing dear about Mandy, even as a courtesy. She wadded up the sheet and took a fresh one.

Mandy,

I know you are surprised to hear from me. It has been such a long time. I hope you and Vaughn are doing okay, and I hope above all that Sonora is happy and thriving. She’d be about fourteen years old now, wouldn’t she? I know you’ve probably never told her who her actual mother is, and I wouldn’t expect you to. Long ago, I gave up any hope of seeing her again. But now I find that hope has returned.

I would like to come to Little Rock and visit, but I’m now the postmistress of Stay More and couldn’t get away from the job long enough to make a trip. I own what was Cluley’s General Store, which you may remember as Jerram’s Store. I’m not getting rich, but I’m comfortable.

Do you think there’s any chance you and Vaughn might bring Sonora and come back to Stay More for a day or two? There’s plenty of room, and I’m a much better cook than I was when I lived with you.

Your sister,
Latha

P.S. If you’re thinking of reporting my whereabouts to the Lunatic Asylum, I’ll save you the trouble. The statute of limitations has expired.

On Monday she bought a postage stamp from herself and mailed this letter, and then she began to wait anxiously for an answer, wondering if she should have tried to be more friendly. She knew that it took only two days to get mail to and from Little Rock, and after the fifth day she began to fret. After a week she began to wonder if the sheriff might show up and arrest her. Two more dreadful weeks went by before finally she got an answer:

Sister dear,

You can bet I was surprised. So was Vaughn. So was Fannie Mae, who has been told about her Aunt Barbara and her Aunt Latha, but never laid eyes on either of them. Barb is somewheres out in California and sends us Xmas cards but that’s it. When you busted out of the nuthouse, it was in all the papers but we never showed it to Fannie Mae, who wasn’t old enough to read at that time anyhow.

Me and Vaughn figured you’d head for SM, but we didn’t think it would take you all that much time to get there. What have you been up to? How’s everything in SM? Is the old homeplace still standing?

Fannie Mae has turned into a real looker. People say she looks more like me than Vaughn, although she’s got red hair. I don’t think she looks the least bit like you except for being so pretty, so maybe she takes after whoever that guy was that raped you. We’ve never told her anything about any of that.

I am sorry but I don’t have any feelings toward visiting SM again. Vaughn says he wouldn’t mind visiting some of his folks up around Parthenon, but he doesn’t want Fannie Mae to see you. I feel the same way.

Your sister,
Mandy

Latha spent a long time thinking about this letter but since she couldn’t bring herself to answer it she finally managed to put it out of her mind. The only way to handle life’s disappointments is to forget them. The last thought she remembered having about the matter was that it was a great pity the upbringing of her daughter had fallen upon such a stupid and mean couple, and that probably Sonora had turned out just as bad.

One day months later she got an interesting letter on printed stationery from the secretary to the director of the Arkansas State Hospital, as it had been renamed. The letter said that the topic of Latha’s escape was still in circulation among the staff and the patients, and while Latha should rest assured that no one any longer had any interest in recapturing her, everyone would simply like to know how in the world she had managed to escape, since she was the only patient who had ever escaped from E Ward. If Latha didn’t mind, could she kindly satisfy everyone’s curiosity about this matter? Latha made sure that her reply was thoroughly sane and as intelligent as she could compose it. She said that she had no idea on earth just how she had managed to make the escape, that the last thing she remembered was something in D Ward, not E Ward, and the next thing she knew she was in a hotel in Nashville, Tennessee. The secretary replied to this thanking her for her answer and regretting that no light could be shed upon the escape.

Latha had managed to keep some memories of the asylum (she thought “state hospital” was a joke) and sometimes when she was fishing, or just sitting in her rocker on the front porch of the store, she would remember the nurses, “Turnkey” and Shedd and Richter and Auel and Bertram. She would remember the doctors, Meddler and Silverstein and Kaplan. She would remember her friends, Mary Jane Hines and Flora Bohannon and Betty Betty Chapman and her best friend of all, Rachel Rafferty, who, Dr. Kaplan had tried to convince her, existed purely in her imagination.

Sometimes she wondered what had become of them, and whether any more of them, like Susie the Imbecile, had died. She remembered how horrible the food had been, and how unspeakably vile the toilets. She wished she had mentioned some of this to the director’s secretary, whose query she had answered. Whenever she remembered the asylum, all she had to do was to look around at the woods and hills of Stay More to realize how lucky she was.

One Sunday evening after she’d finished her supper of catfish and asparagus and was sitting in her rocker on the front porch of the store, watching for the first lightning bugs, she heard music, which she identified as a violin, or fiddle. She hadn’t heard that sound since Isaac Ingledew played his fiddle. Isaac was the giant who had rescued Latha as a child from the Ike Whitter gang at the general store. He had been a great fiddler but had last played his instrument when his grandson Raymond went off to war. That had been “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” but what Latha was hearing now was unfamiliar, perhaps improvised, something soft and slow, maybe even classical. The sound was enough to touch off a flash of memory of her lost time in the E Ward, of an albino girl Latha would hum with, but it was only a quick flash of memory and quickly dissipated before Latha could fully recapture any of it. Now the fiddler—or violinist—came into view, and she recognized Dan! He kept playing as he climbed the steps to the store porch and then sat down in the porch swing near her. When he finished playing, Latha applauded for a few moments, and he made a little bow.

“I never knew you could do that!” she exclaimed.

“Never had anything to do it with,” Dan said, “until I did a lick of work for Bevis Ingledew, and he paid me with this violin, which used to belong to his granddaddy, Isaac.”

“Yes, I heard that violin several times when I was young,” she said.

“You’re still young,” Dan said.

“Where’s Annie?” she asked.

“Sleeping, I reckon,” he said. “She’s getting old enough to look after herself.”

They visited for a while and she told him about the exchange of letters with her sister, and also the letter from the secretary at the asylum.

Dan said, “If you’ll keep Annie while I’m gone, I’ll go down to Little Rock and kidnap Sonora for you.”

“Don’t say that,” she said.

“I’m serious.”

“I know you are, and it scares me.”

They dropped the subject, and soon Dan left. Sometimes at night, when the evening breeze was blowing west, she thought she could hear the sound of Dan’s fiddle, and sometimes this gave her another flash or two of her humming with the albino, but she could not even remember the girl’s name. For a long time she thought that she was just imagining the sound of the fiddle, since Dan lived a good mile or more the other side of Dinsmore Hill. But apparently other people had heard the fiddle too, and the men who loafed and gabbed on Latha’s store porch began to talk about trying to get Dan to play for some square dances. But Dan never would.

June was Latha’s favorite month. The next time it rolled around, one morning before going across the road to her garden, Latha happened to notice that the mullein stalk she’d named after Sonora and then bent down was actually standing tall like a soldier! She had to look closely at it to be sure it was the same mullein she’d bent down. After the mail truck came, and she’d finished putting mail in the boxes and most of the customers had gone home, a black Ford coupe drove up and parked at the store, and Latha’s heart jumped into her throat when she recognized the driver as Vaughn Twichell. Then the passenger door opened and out stepped her sister Mandy, who was obese and middle-aged. There was a third person in the back seat. Mandy waddled up onto the porch. Latha didn’t know whether to get out of her rocker and give her sister a hug, or not.

“Listen, Latha,” Mandy said in a low voice, “we can’t stay too long. But before I introduce you to your niece, you have to promise me, on your sacred honor or whatever, that you will not say a word to my daughter to give her any idee that you’re her mom. Can you do that?”

“Of course,” Latha said. She wished she had visited the out-house, because she was about to wet her panties.

“Okay,” Mandy said. “And please remember, her name is Fannie Mae.” Then Mandy returned to the car, opened the door, and the girl climbed out of the back seat. When she stood, she was taller than Mandy. Or Vaughn. She looked up at the store, and her eyes settled on Latha. She really was very pretty, and was wearing a nice dress not of the type you go for country drives in. Her hair was the color of cinnamon, and her eyes were the blue of robin’s eggs. Mandy took her arm and led her up the porch steps and it was all that Latha could do to keep from giving her a big hug.

“Fannie Mae, this here is your Aint Latha that I’ve told you about,” Mandy said. “And this is her store.”

It was ridiculous, but they shook hands. That’s all. Just to touch her hand thrilled Latha. This moment had been rehearsed thoroughly again and again in Latha’s mind, but now she blew all her lines.

“Hi, Aunt Latha,” Sonora said.

“It’s wonderful to meet you at last,” Latha said, with a little too much enthusiasm, which put a frown on Mandy’s face. “You’uns all have a seat. I’ll fetch some lemonade.” She could hardly tear herself away long enough to do it, but she went to the kitchen and made a pitcher of lemonade, chipped some chunks of ice out of the ice-box, and served the drinks.

“What is the world coming to?” Mandy remarked. “How do you get
ice
?”

“The mail truck brings it, in blocks,” Latha said. “I’ve also got a cooler in the store filled with soda pop.” She spoke to her daughter. “Would you rather have a Dr. Pepper, Orange Crush, Nehi Root Beer, or…?” She stopped short of giving Sonora an inventory of the whole store.

“Lemonade’s fine,” Sonora said.

They sat and drank and visited. There was something about Sonora that reminded Latha of—she realized she hadn’t even thought of his name for a long, long time—Sonora’s father, Every Dill. But Every had been homely, and Sonora wasn’t at all.

“What grade are you in, hon?” Latha asked.

“Eighth, next fall,” Sonora said.

“She’s going to West Side,” Mandy said.

Latha didn’t know what West Side was, but she nodded and said, “That’s nice.”

“This here town sure has changed a lot,” Vaughn observed. “I’d hardly know it. But Parthenon is all run-down too. Everybody’s going to California.”