Family Linen (24 page)

“Jesus H. Christ!” This is just about the worst day that Coy Eubanks, the bulldozer operator, has ever spent. It's damn sure the damn worst job. First you run up on a half-rotted corpse and then some goddamn fool teenager shoots himself in the hand. They'll do anything for attention. Coy Eubanks would of walked off the job right then, right that minute, if he hadn't owed a favor to Dr. Don, who cured him last year of venereal warts and helped him cover it up from the missus. Well, everybody's got something to hide. But most people don't have no actual bodies where they're planning to put their pool. Still, if a body
is
under there, you need to get it up. Coy can see that. And he halfway wonders if Dr. Don wasn't
looking
for this body after all, the way he seemed so excited, sketching out for Coy where to dig. Well, you can't ever tell, and in the long run, it don't matter. It's a sight how many people through the ages must have fell down in a well. If it was Coy, though, deciding, he'd of put the pool up a little closer to the house and built in a barbecue pit. He'd never spend this much money and not have a barbecue pit. Well. Ain't going to be no more work done
this
day, for damn sure.

Sean stands unsteadily and walks, supported by Myrtle and Kate, toward the house, while the rest of them go over to look down in Coy's big hole. What they see is bones and bits of bones and clothes, chewed up by the bulldozer, and one good shoe, all of it bearing little or no relation to what was, but everybody knows that's him all right—Jewell Rife. Sybill is sobbing. “Oh, I'm sorry. I'm just so sorry,” is what she says. She still carries the blue clock, trailing its cord along through the dirt. Lacy suddenly grabs at Nettie's shoulder, hard, and makes her turn around. “Nettie,” Lacy says, “what do you think?”

What do I think?
Lord
. You're asking me? Me that has left one man and buried two? Well, a lot has happened. And sometimes, looking back, I can remember how it went, but I can't recall what it was like, all those years ago. I can see me sitting in that kitchen out in Long Valley, grieving, I can see the high spots of color in Elizabeth's cheeks when she married Jewell. But I can't recall how strong I felt things, how wrought up I got then. Seems like it was somebody else. Life goes by so fast, just like a dream. But I'll tell you about Elizabeth if you want to know.

Elizabeth, and I hate to say it, was a pure-tee fool. Now I don't mean a fool in the sense of dumb. But learning and knowing are two different things. Elizabeth learned aplenty, but she never knew much. Me, I've known more than I wanted to, all my life. And I was here. I saw it all. I saw it coming, and I saw it pass. I know what happened in this house, I've always known what happened here, but I know when to hold my tongue. There's no point hanging dirty linen on the line. You can know it, but you don't have to tell it. Because life is long, and bad times come and go, and you have to hold your tongue and bide your time if you want to go on living in this world. And there ain't any other, and so you might as well.

Elizabeth took things too much to heart. If she hadn't of been
too
good and
too
sweet all those years, she might of seen him coming too, Jewell Rife. She might of known him for what he was. But she couldn't see it until too late, and wouldn't own up to it then, not even to herself, in fact I don't know to this day if she
ever
did, ever let herself know exactly what all went on in those bad years. I doubt it. Because the road, that seemed so twisty and full of holes, straightened out after a time, and she kept on walking it, and holding her head high, and after a while, it was like those years were just a ghost town she'd walked through and then decided to forget. I've not got much patience with that. I'll take it all, whatever comes, it's the way I am. Ain't nothing else coming, the way I see it, so you might as well take what you can get. Take it all. I can't forget a thing, either, or
won't
, I reckon. I'm old as I can be now, and I remember all of it.

You can see how it happened. It was bad times after Daddy died. A lot of drifters came around in those days looking for work, looking for
anything
, I guess, and for a girl like Elizabeth it was hard to judge a man like that, him not being from the county here, and her having no way to place him, or know who his people were. She hadn't been anywhere, or done anything, remember, in spite of the airs she put on. She was a girl who had spent all her days in a house on a hill, mooning. Oh she fell for Ransom McClain, and fell hard, or thought she did, but she couldn't keep him. A man, even a man as mincy as Ransom McClain, don't want a little stuffed doll. There's more to it than pink satin ribbons and sitting in a swing. But she didn't know about that. She didn't know a thing. And so she stayed on in this house, and Fay with her, getting paler, getting older, getting too dressed up to go to town. A few more years and she would of been a laughingstock, a crazy old maid, like Grace Harrison or Miss Mona Pike. She was right there on the verge of it. She stayed on up here, while down below, the hard times hit, and many's the man that was out of work, and the drifters started coming into town.

They had heard tell of work at the mills or the quarry, but when they got here, they found one mill boarded up, that used to be ours, and then the Wilsons lost theirs in 1931, and the quarry quit about then, too. So there wasn't nothing for them to do here after all, and after a while they moved on and a while after that, they just stopped coming. I used to see them standing around the depot, when I'd come into town with Marvin on a Saturday, or standing around the hotel. I was a married girl then. I'd see them standing around there, shifting their feet, their eyes hot and staring. They didn't have a thing, most of them. It was awful. I'd look away real quick, I was pretty then.

But one time, it was right after Christmas, one of them caught my eye, and I found out later who it was. Jewell Rife. I never knew it before I saw him up here later, at Elizabeth's house. But when I saw him that first time, downtown, he stood with one foot up on the hitching rail we still had out in front of the bank then, and the bank was closed behind him, and he was smoking a cigarette and looking out at the street like he owned it, cars and trucks and people to boot. He held his head cocked to the side. He had a yellow-and-brown plaid suit, and no coat. He didn't look like he was cold, though. He had curly black hair. His eyes were light, and kind of far away. He was just watching everything and everybody. Looking for an opportunity. He was big, too, or bigger than most of the men around here. It crossed my mind that he might of been in a circus sometime. He looked like that.

The way it happened was that their gas heater went out up there right in the dead of winter, late January it was, and Elizabeth had phoned down to tell Mr. Bascom and ask him to come up there and take a look at it. Mr. Bascom used to play poker with Daddy, and he tried to see to things for Elizabeth and Fay. When she'd let him. She was so proud, she wouldn't let anybody do much, ever, or even tell me or anybody else if she was to get sick. They could of died up there, and she was too good to let anybody help her. Including me—me most of all, I reckon. But Mr. Bascom was the best-hearted man. He ran the hardware, and fixed whatever needed fixing all over town—wasn't anybody
building
much, in those days—and he'd take some of those drifters in sometimes, and let them sleep in that back room at the store, and help them out if he had any work. Well, he had took in Jewell Rife, who had a definite way about him, everybody said it and it was true, and he took Jewell Rife with him up to Elizabeth's to look at that gas heater. This was one of those old Ruud heaters, and from time to time you had to get them blown out.

I bet he thought he'd died and gone to heaven, Jewell Rife. Think for a minute if you was him, and imagine what-all you saw. Imagine that cold gray afternoon. And here's the house way up on the hill at the end of the long, long walk all lined with the boxwoods, all that land lying around it empty and cold and smeared white with the leftover snow, and inside the house is Elizabeth, to answer the door. It must of been like stepping into a magazine, to answer that door. Because who knows where-all he'd been, or what he came from? In those days men were desperate. It must of been like stepping into a movie, those pretty things of Mama's, and how Elizabeth kept them all just so. But the rooms were big, and cold and drafty, the heater was broke. Elizabeth stood in her long plaid coat with Fay behind her, wrapped up in a blanket. Jewell stood there holding his hat, looking like something wild, looking like all outdoors. But one thing about Jewell was that he always did have the prettiest manners. You'd have to call him a lively man, too, when he wanted to be. “You go ahead and start in on the heater,” he told Mr. Bascom, after they'd been introduced. “You go right ahead on, sir, but I believe I'll just take the liberty of building these pretty ladies a fire in the fireplace to warm them up a bit, they look half-froze to me. Ladies, where's your wood?”

“Out back there in the shed,” Elizabeth said, her voice shaking. “But that won't be necessary, I'm sure, Mister—”

“Rife,” said Jewell. “And I won't take no for an answer.”

Mr. Bascom went in the kitchen to look at the heater, and Jewell went back outside and around the house and up to the barn for the wood. He was checking things out, I imagine, and I imagine he liked what he saw. He came back carrying a great load of it like it was nothing, like it was matchsticks, and dumped it all down in the parlor, and moved the Chinese screen to the side and started right in building a fire, getting wood chips all over the carpet. I don't think anybody had made a fire in that fireplace for years and years, not since I could remember. Probably not since Daddy died, in fact, or if they had, I couldn't remember it. Of course I'd been gone two years or more by then.

“Get me some paper,” Jewell said, and Fay went scurrying, and then he sent her off to the kitchen for matches. Mr. Bascom came in and out, to see what was going on. And Elizabeth stood by the window holding her coat collar tight at her neck, her eyes as wide and as blue as Mama's Wedgwood plate in the dining-room breakfront. Then he lit it, but he had forgot to open the flue, and smoke came all out in the room and everybody set in to coughing. Jewell reached up in the chimney then and found the cord, and finally pulled it. Mr. Bascom said everybody was coughing, and smoke filled up the parlor. Then Fay got to laughing, and Jewell did too. He threw back his head and just hollered with laughter. Finally Elizabeth joined in, and once she started, she couldn't stop. Her eyes streamed tears, and Mr. Bascom had to pound her on the back and she had to put her arms up over her head. This was what did it, I think. Jewell could make her laugh. Because there had been precious little laughter in that house for years and years. And making a woman laugh can mean a sight more than other things that ought by all rights to be more important. So everybody was laughing, and then Elizabeth and Fay got up by the fire, and after a while Elizabeth took off her coat and Fay took off her blanket, and the parlor started warming up. I bet it was a mess, too. Jewell Rife went in the kitchen and helped Mr. Bascom blow out the Ruud heater, and then they got it started. They made a big loud noise, those heaters, but they worked good. Elizabeth went in the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee, and then they sat down around the kitchen table to drink it, her and Mr. Bascom and Jewell Rife. Mr. Bascom said later that he knew what was going to happen, right then. He said that often since that time, he's rued the day he ever took Jewell Rife up there with him.

Because Elizabeth was like an apple hanging on a tree, waiting for somebody to come along and pick it, and Jewell was the man for the job. He was one of those men that can do just about anything, and can get whatever they want. So Elizabeth was easy for him, easy pickings. Besides, Jewell could of charmed a snake. Now there's nothing wrong with that, but if things come too easy for you, and everything came easy for Jewell, I reckon—he was just down on his luck temporarily, like so many others—why then you don't develop no restraint. You can't say no to yourself when you ought to. But he did have a way about him. Mr. Bascom said he told a funny story there at the table about one of the drifters down at the hotel that mumbled all the time, and wrote things down on little scraps of paper and put them in his pockets and his shoes. He said this fellow thought he had a dog, too, but he didn't. Anyway, I guess it had been a long time since Elizabeth had heard such foolishness. I can see it now, can hear her laughing. She had kind of a silvery laugh. She was always a handsome girl, big and fair like Fay, with the whitest, smoothest skin. Fay came and stood at the door, hanging back and watching. Elizabeth was smiling and Mr. Bascom said it had been years since he'd thought how pretty she was. He looked over at Jewell, and Jewell was taking note, he said. The Ruud heater was roaring away. Mr. Bascom stood up and put on his hat and his coat and his gloves, and Jewell Rife did the same.

“Well, I sure do thank you.” Elizabeth was blushing.

“It's been a pleasure,” Jewell said. “It's not every day a man gets to help out a lady in distress.” He winked at Mr. Bascom, who winked back before he thought better of it. Jewell was like that. You'd find yourself going along with him. Jewell was looking around. “I don't mean to speak out of turn now,” he said, “but it looks to me like you've got a lot around here that needs fixing, and I'd be proud to come up here sometime and do a few little no-account things for you, since I've got some time on my hands. Wouldn't take a minute to shore up those back steps,” he said. Jewell Rife noticed everything.

“Well—” said Elizabeth. “Well—I can't pay you much,” she warned him. She was twisting her hands in her skirt.

“I'm not worth much,” Jewell said, and then he winked at
her
. “But I can sure fix them steps.”

Elizabeth hemmed and hawed a little, she was flustered, and then Jewell said, “That settles it. I'll see you again directly.” He nodded to Elizabeth, and nodded to Fay over by the door, and put on his hat, and they took their leave. Mr. Bascom said that Jewell Rife asked him question after question about Elizabeth, all the way down that long cold hill, and that when he ran out of questions, he started whistling. Mr. Bascom said he answered him, and saw no harm in it, even though he saw real clear what was liable to happen. But he thought it would be just fine. He liked Jewell Rife, thought he was smart and handy, and I guess he thought Elizabeth could do a lot worse. Like everybody else, he thought she needed a man to take care of her. He said he thought Daddy would of wanted it too, and that he did it in Daddy's memory.