Enduring (44 page)

“Howdy,” he said. “There aint any Sue McComb anywheres near Demijohn.” She couldn’t comment on that. “But,” he said, “I figgered if I just kept lookin hard enough, I’d find you. So this is where you live, huh?” She nodded. “Well, Sue-or-whatever-your-name-is, I been doin a lot of thinkin lately. Matter a fact, I aint hardly been able to think of nuthin else. And here’s what I’ve decided: I’ve just got to have you. I don’t keer what it takes. I will leave my wife and kids. I will sell everything I own. I swear, they aint nuthin on this earth that I ever liked as much as that little hour me’n you spent in that cave up on Banty Creek. I swear, they aint nuthin in this world that I want to do any more, exceptin that. I know you liked it too. I swear, they’s not nuthin for me to do but have you. I mean to have you, and I aim to tear the clouds out of the sky to git you.”

She hoped that all of this was just one more of her wild fantasies, but she knew that she was not imagining it. She knew that Dolph existed and was really standing there talking to her, saying the things that he was saying.

The screen door made its wranging sprang and Sonora came out, carrying a plate of chicken-salad sandwiches and two glasses of milk. She gave Latha a glass and a sandwich, and then, because it is very rude not to offer something to another person present, even a stranger, she held out the plate to him.

“Thank you kindly,” Dolph said. “I aint et since five this morning.” He took a sandwich from the plate and bit a large bite out of it and studied Sonora while he was chewing.

“This is my daughter Sonora,” Latha said.

He chewed quickly and swallowed down the bite half-chewed. “You tole me you wasn’t married.”

“Reckon I must’ve been telling you one.”

“Miss…” he said to Sonora, “…would ye mind too awful much if me and yore maw had a couple words private?”

“That depends,” said Sonora.

“’Pends on what?” he asked.

“‘Pend on whether them two words is nice or nasty.”

“I promise ye, gal, they’ll be nice as I kin make em.”

“
Maw
,” said Sonora to her with a smile, “you want me to leave?”

“Just for a minute or two, hon,” Latha said, “if you don’t mind.”

“Okay,” said Sonora, and took her glass of milk and her sandwich and went back into the house.

As soon as Sonora was out of sight, Dolph wanted to know where Latha’s husband was at. Latha decided that since she had already lied to him once by saying her name was Sue McComb of Demijohn, and since a man consumed by lust will likely believe anything, she told him that her husband was the actual Luther Chism, who was working over at the canning factory. Luther spent most of his time year around making and selling the fabled Chism’s Dew moonshine whiskey, but his experience firing up the still made him an ideal man to run the boiler in the canning factory. He had a wife named Sarah and a daughter named Lucy, both of them homely as sin, but although Dolph believed her he had to go to the canning factory to see for himself if there was such a man. Latha imagined what might happen: Luther would mistake Dolph for a revenue agent. As soon as he was out of sight (of course Latha didn’t watch him ride out of sight because it is very back luck to do so; it means the person going out of sight might die), Sonora came back out of the house and wanted to know why Latha had told him that Sonora was her daughter. Just to get rid of him, Latha said. “I
am
your daughter, aren’t I?” Sonora surprised her by saying. Latha for only a moment was tempted to admit it, but she had taken a solemn vow to her sister that she never would, and she did all she could to talk Sonora out of the notion.
But the time may come
, she told herself.

Later that afternoon Luther Chism came to the store and bought the makings of cigarettes and hung around to chat with her after he’d rolled one. While he smoked, he happened to ask her if she knew any fellers named Dolph Rivett by any chance, and when she said she might, he said that the funniest thing had happened over to the canning factory when this stranger of that name had shown up and asked to speak with him, Luther, and then he asked him if he had a wife named Sarah and a daughter named Lucy and he allowed as how he did. The man said he’d just been talking to Sarah on the store porch but had met her fishing up on Banty Creek some weeks before, and right then and there Luther knew it was mistook identity because Sarah had never been known to go fishing and she sure wasn’t on no store porch today. So Luther asked him to describe her, and the feller got right rapturous and said “She’s got eyes like a startled doe’s and a mouth like a pink morning-glory just opening and hair like the smoke in a kerosene lantern and she’s nearly as tall as me and built like a young cat.” Luther Chism flicked tears of laughter from his eyes and said that he had replied, “Mister, I know of jist one gal hereabouts who’d fit that description, but it sho aint Sarey. My Sarey’s got eyes like a sow’s, and a mouth like a dried persimmon, and hair like a black rooster sittin atop her head and she’s half as short as you and built like a brick outhouse.” Luther offered to round up the boys and run the feller clean out of the county if he gave Latha any more trouble. And then before going back to the canning factory he asked her did she know that old Every Dill had shown up? He’d come and put one of his posters up at the canning factory and they hadn’t stopped talking about it. Every Dill a preacher? Luther asked Latha if she didn’t suppose that maybe he could be secretly a revenuer. She said that wouldn’t surprise her as much as learning that he was a preacher. “Speak a the devil!” Luther said. “Yonder he comes again.” And here came Every walking up the road. He had no more posters, but he was returning the hammer he’d borrowed from her. They exchanged howdies and Luther said he and Latha had just been talking about him, wondering if he was really a genuine preacher. Every said that actually he was a special agent of the United States Revenue Office, sent out to locate one of their men that Luther had locked up in his smokehouse. Latha thought Luther was having a heart attack. Every pointed the hammer at Luther and told him it was a Colt revolver and he’d better come along peaceable. Luther demanded to know if his leg was being pulled, and Every reached out and pulled his leg. Luther wanted to know how in tarnation Every knew that he had a revenuer locked up in his smokehouse, and Every explained that since Luther had told the story to Fent Bullen who had told it to Bob Witter who told it to Lawlor Coe, it had become common knowledge. Every invited him to bring the revenuer along to the revival meeting on Sunday, but Luther didn’t appreciate the humor of that and said he wasn’t fixing to come to no revival meeting himself.

When Luther was gone back to the canning factory and she was alone with Every, she invited him to pull up a chair and they exchanged polite chitchat. How had they been? They both had been “tobble,” which is the way you pronounce “tolerable,” meaning nothing to complain about. He said he was pleased as punch to see her looking so good. “I’ve sure seen some places. Been all the way to California and back.”

“And been all the way to Heaven and back too?” she said.

He looked at her, momentarily puzzled, then said, “Oh,” and laughed mildly. “No, I haven’t had a chance yet to inspect the Kingdom, though I’ve had a couple of words with the King.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Believe it or not,” he said.

“It
is
a little bit dubious,” she said.

“Remind me sometime,” he said, “to tell you how I got converted.”

“I suspect there are a lot of things I will have to remind you to tell me how you got.”

He did not comment on that. He was not looking at her but at the old ruin of the bank building across the road. “You’ve not changed at all,” he said, “but this town sure has. This old place is sure dead on the vine.” In a reminiscent tone he continued, “Last time I was through here was back in the spring of twenty-five, and it was late at night and I didn’t stay very long at all. Just made one stop. Just dropped in for a few words with Lawlor Coe.” He dropped the reminiscent tone; his voice became earnest. “You recall Lawler used to be just about my only pal back in the old days, so I didn’t mind talking to him. There was only one reason I had for talking to anybody. I want you to know what that reason was, Latha. I will tell you: the only reason I come through here that night was to try and find you.”

He stopped. After a while he said, quietly, “Lawlor told me they’d had you locked up down there in that state hospital for going-on three years. Three whole years. So I reckon there are a lot of things I will have to remind you to tell
me
how
you
got.”

She did not comment on that.

“Latha,” he said, “you and me are going to have to do an awful lot of talking, sooner or later, but there’s just one thing I’ve got to ask you right now: are you boiling mad at me, or just plain mad at me, or just peeved at me, or what?”

She smiled. “A little bit burned, maybe.”

“Well, is it just a first-degree burn that I could put some ointment on, or is it a hopeless fourth-degree burn?”

“Hard to tell, Every. It’s an old burn with a lot of scar tissue grown over it.”

“I will heal it,” he declared. “I promise you.”

“All right,” she said.

“Last night…” he said. “Last night I couldn’t hardly believe it when I found out you were back here again. I went up to the old home place and tried to sleep on an old pile of straw in the corner, but I couldn’t. Not a wink. I swear, I had a hard enough time talking myself into coming back to Stay More in the first place, to give a meeting. But after I found out you were here, I just didn’t know if I could ever get up my nerve to go and do it. I tossed and turned till the crack of dawn, and then I got up and went out into the yard and asked the Lord if He could give me any help, but He just said to me, ‘Son, this is something you’ll have to settle on your own. This your Big Trial, and you’ll—’”

“Horsefeathers,” she said. She said that and he hushed, and she said, “Every, if you’re asking me to believe that you actually heard a voice saying those words, then you are crazier than I ever was.”

He looked hurt for a moment, but then he grinned and asked, “When you were down there at that state hospital, did you ever hear voices?”

“I don’t recall,” she said. “I suppose I did.”

“I’ll bet,” he said, “that you even hear voices once in a while even still.”

She shook her head, but he was right.

“Aw, come on, I’ll bet you do,” he insisted.

“Okay,” she said. “So both of us are crazy.”

He shook his head. “No, you don’t have to be crazy to hear a voice. Now I don’t mean for you to believe that I heard some actual sound coming out of the Lord’s mouth and into my ear. I don’t hold with that prodigy hokum myself. But a true Christian has got his Lord in him, and can talk with Him subjectively, in his mind or in his heart’s core. Likewise, some crazy people might have the Devil in them, and hear subjective voices of evil.”

“So you believe in Satan too,” she said.

“I believe in Evil,” he said, “just as I believe in Good. I don’t believe in any fiendish-looking brute running around in his red underwear with a long tail and a pitchfork, just as I don’t believe in any old white-bearded Grampaw a-sittin Up Yonder on a cloud. But I believe in Forces. Powers. Causes. Agents. Movers, even if all they move is people. I believe in Light and Darkness, in Right and Wrong, in True and False, in Sickness and Health—”

“You’ve got it all spelled out, have you,” she said, with sarcasm, but then she softened her tone and said, “Preach to me tomorrow, Every. Go ahead and finish telling me about this little chat you were having with the Lord.”

“Well, He just wanted me to know that He was trying me out on my own, that I couldn’t be hanging onto His apron-strings during this particular time of trial. But He left me with the notion that He wouldn’t think too highly of me if I was to back down.”

“Maybe that Mover inside of you isn’t the Lord,” she said. “Maybe that thing talking to you was just your guilt.”

He thought about that for a while. Then he asked, “How do you mean that, Latha?” There was that sudden nervousness in his voice again.

“You feel the Lord has deputized you to come and save Stay More,” she said, “to save the town you nearly ruined!”

He was stricken. “You mean you—”

“I don’t mean me,” she said.

“Then I don’t know what you might mean,” he said.

“I think you do,” she said.

Impulsively his eyes shifted to the old stone edifice across the road, and then he seemed to realize that she had caught him glancing at it, and when his eyes returned to hers they were thoroughly sheepish. He asked, “Does everybody think that I—?”

“Nobody thinks anything,” she said. “Nobody even knew that you were back in town, remember?”

“Then why do you think it was me?”

“Think what was you?”

“Think it was me that robbed—”

“How did you know it was robbed?”

“You just said so.”

“No, I didn’t. I didn’t say a word about it.”

“Well, somebody told me, then. But why do you think it was me?”

“Good Lord, Every, who else could it have been? And even with that get-up you were in, that hood with the two eye-holes cut in it, and those outlandish clothes, I knew it was you, Every. Have you forgot it was me that you robbed, not just the bank? Have you forgot that I was the poor scared teller you held up? And even though you didn’t even speak to me, even though you didn’t want me to recognize your voice so you just passed me that note, I knew it was you. But I almost didn’t believe you, I almost felt like testing you, to see if you really would kill me, but I figured that if you were desperate enough to hold up the bank, you were desperate enough to kill me. You would have killed me, wouldn’t you have?”

“Did you ever tell anyone you thought it was me?”

“No.”

“Why not? Didn’t the sheriff ask you who you thought might have done it?”

“Yes, but I told him I thought it must’ve been some foreigner because there wasn’t any resemblance to anybody I’d ever seen.”