Letter From Home (19 page)

 
Who was Faye Tatum?

Five people described her for the
Gazette
. Each knew her in a different way. Lucille Winters worked with Faye at Jessop's Five and Dime. Jim Dan Pulliam is an aspiring artist whom Faye encouraged. Betty Steele took classes from Faye. Lou Hopper owns the Blue Light where Faye loved to dance. Martha Crane lived next door to Faye.

Mrs. Winters has big dark eyes and a smooth pompadour. She talks fast and has a quick laugh, but sometimes as she remembered she held a handkerchief to her eyes. She has worked at Jessop's since she graduated from high school in 1930. “Faye loved to sell jewelry. I never knew anybody who liked pretty things better than Faye. She always dressed to the nines, even when she had to redo clothes from before the war. She'd add a crocheted collar or new piping. And hats! She made one with red felt and spangles for our Christmas party. Most of all, she loved to dance. People ought to know that's why she went to the Blue Light. Whenever she told me about somebody she met there, she talked about how they could dance. That was all. She didn't take anybody home with her. I know that's so because she would have told me. She told me a lot of things that were private, not things you'd tell just anybody. She told me how much she loved Clyde, that he was the only man she'd ever cared about and how she prayed for him, that he'd come home safe and not have to go overseas. When she got word he was going to be home on furlough before his unit shipped out, she cried. She was so afraid he'd get killed. She said having him home was like heaven. There's been all this talk about Faye, that somebody said they'd seen a man going to her house late at night, well, I want to tell everybody that's a lie. Faye never thought about any man but Clyde. All she wanted was for the war to end and him to come home.”

Jim Dan Pulliam works at Purdy's Garage. Tall, slender, quick moving, he speaks softly. His hands are stained with grease and dirt. He is seventeen and he is an artist. “In the ninth grade, I got in a fight with these guys who made fun of me because I liked art class. I broke this one guy's arm. Barb Tatum told her mom. She came to my house.” His smoky blue eyes moved away to gaze at the head-high sunflowers pushing against the wire fence near the garage. “Not a house really. A trailer over in Burn's Flat.” His eyes were defiant. “But she came and you would have thought I lived on Hickory Hill. She looked at my drawings. Some of them were charcoal on grocery sacks. She told me people don't understand about capturing light and color. She said an artist sees the pulse of life. That's what she called it, the pulse of life. That was the first time I understood what I was doing and why it made me feel right.” He smoothed his fingers on a shiny wrench. “Sometimes I feel right. Lots of times I get mad and throw the painting away. Because it's not good enough. Mrs. Tatum told me I had to keep on painting, no matter if people laughed. I must never quit, not even if they hated me. If I gave up, I'd shrivel away like corn left in the field. I've got a painting I've been working on this summer. I was going to show it to her. The sun on the water at Hunter Lake . . .”

Water beaded the bright, green ferns on Betty Steele's screened-in porch. Despite the Oklahoma wind, there was no dust on the freshly painted swing. The cushions on the wicker chairs have been recently re-covered. Mrs. Fletcher is a Home Economics teacher. Her brown pageboy glistened in the afternoon sunlight. She clapped her hands together, her face eager. “Faye loved painting. I know I'm not any good, but I always wanted to paint and she had classes at the store on Saturdays for people like me who work. I learned a lot about teaching from her even though she never even went to college. But when she looked, she really saw what was there. People. Beauty. She'd be halfway through a class and all of a sudden, she'd dart across the room and point at somebody and she'd cry, ‘Look at the way the sun's coming through the window. If we could paint Mrs. Harris in the sunlight, wouldn't that be beautiful, class?' And Mrs. Harris, now I'm just using a name because I don't want to embarrass anybody, but she might be a plain woman with thick glasses and a tired face, but Faye would make us see the beauty, the glow in her eyes, the delicate line of her jaw, the life. Oh, I tell you, Faye was a teacher who had magic. You ask people who took her classes, they'll tell you. Most of them never heard of Rembrandt and couldn't draw a lick, but if they opened their hearts even a little, they took something from Faye's class that they never forgot. I was so sorry when she had to give up most of those classes to work full time at Jessop's. It was a loss to everybody in town who loved art. I know she kept on teaching a few, like Jim Dan. . . .”

Lou Hopper said she doesn't put up with any nonsense at the Blue Light. A tall redhead, she doesn't smile and her voice is gruff. “Lots of people in town don't like beer joints, but I run a clean place and there's no trouble here. People can drink beer, dance, eat ribs or a hamburger when we've got meat, cheese and rye and chips when we don't. Since the war started, we're full every night. Music helps people forget their troubles. I hardly ever spoke to Faye Tatum, but I knew her because she was a regular. She was the best dancer I ever saw. She'd dance with anybody, old, young, as long as they kept their hands to themselves and danced like there was nothing left in the world but the music. You could take one look at her on the dance floor—and that's where she spent the whole evening, never sitting in a booth or at the bar—and know she was here for the music, the beat, the sound, the rhythm. God, she could dance. There was a soldier boy from Louisiana—he's gone now, shipped out to the Pacific—and he and Faye used to jitterbug. Everybody else would stop and make a big circle and when the music ended, they'd shout and clap. And I can tell you, she came by herself and she left by herself. She was never off in a corner with a man.” Mrs. Hopper raised a thick dark eyebrow. “A lot of people who come here are lonely. They're looking for love. You can always tell. But not Faye. All she wanted to do was dance. Now, I hardly ever spoke to her but I remember once she said, ‘When I dance, I'm not afraid.'” Mrs. Hopper lit a cigarette, drew a deep lungful. “I told her, ‘Honey, I don't know what you're afraid of, but I'm glad you got the music.'”

Martha Crane has lived on Archer Street for thirty-three years. Her husband, William, managed the Hamilton paint store for forty years until his death in 1935. Mrs. Crane's house shines with care, the window curtains crisp, the floor bright with polish, the slipcovers freshly laundered and ironed. Family pictures are everywhere, on the mantel, the bookcases, the tables. A portrait of her son, George, in his captain's uniform, is in a place of honor on the mantel. “My husband liked Clyde. Clyde helped William when we had trouble with the car. Clyde could almost always get a car to start, but he wasn't much to keep things up around the house and Faye was too busy with Barb and her painting to keep after him. She didn't spend time cooking or cleaning, but she loved to play with Barb. I remember when Barb was about five, she and Faye used to laugh and giggle and make mud pies, and they'd poke sprigs of grass on top and Faye would say, ‘Pass the parsley,' and she and Barb would just die laughing. I never could see what was so funny, but they laughed and laughed. I guess Faye really didn't much care how the house looked or the yard. She was crazy about the wildflowers, always said God made the prettiest flowers so why not just enjoy them. There was Indian paintbrush in the field behind their house. But for a woman who always had daubs of paint on her face and her clothes, you'd think she would have wanted their house to look nice. It needed painting a long time before Clyde got drafted. And that broken-down clothesline was just a disgrace. Sometimes she strung the wash on my fence and if that didn't look tacky! But I'm glad now I never said a thing about it. Sometimes she'd set up an easel underneath the oak tree, the big one that spreads shade so far there isn't a scrap of grass beneath it. I used to go hang out my wash on those days and take my time about it so I could watch her paint. There was something—oh, I don't know how to say it, but it was exciting to see her, her hair swept up behind a bandana and splashes of paint on her old blue smock and her face streaked like an Indian on the warpath. It was like she was more alive than anybody. You know how you can see a crow in the sunlight, eyes bright as a new penny, feathers shiny as polished coal? That crow—just for a minute you look and you see him living, just like you are, and the whole world seems bursting with life, you and the crow and a big old sunflower and the cicadas. That's what it was like to watch Faye paint.”

Faye Tatum still loves and laughs and paints and dances in the memories of those who knew her.