Songs in Ordinary Time (62 page)

to recall the good times along the way with Luther and Earlie sparring just for the hell of it. He remembered how it made him laugh and how it got on Duvall’s nerves.

“Gonna twist his arm up tight behind his back,” Luther was muttering.

“Gonna say, ‘Why’d you do that? Why’d you dump us like that, Earlie? Tell me now, why?’”

Montague knew. He knew why, but Luther would scoff, insisting, no, that wasn’t it, if anything a woman’s swelling belly would be enough to keep Earlie from ever going back. But the hunger had grown so strong with the deepening heat that Montague knew, knew that in Hankham they’d find Earlie and Laydee with their newborn child. She’d already missed a month when they left, which was why Earlie had been so quick to jump at Duvall’s offer: all expenses paid and a chance to see the country while he parlayed a small investment (his Army savings, which he’d just handed over to Duvall, not a paper or a note signed) into a sizable nest egg.

Montague had begged the boy not to do it, but Earlie was determined. His child wasn’t going to grow up poor as him. This was his big chance and he wasn’t about to turn his back on it, especially when a man of Duvall’s caliber had such faith in him.

“Why’d you run out on us with Duvall’s money, Earlie! Come on, Earlie!”

Luther’s head bobbed over the wheel away from the imagined jabs. “Unh!

Unh! Unh! Tell me! Tell me, Earlie!” he grunted, grinning with his vision of revenge.

Well, well, well, here they finally were, mayonnaise jars sloshing and the hunger boring a hole in Montague’s gut all the way down Hankham’s main street. But Laydee and her family were gone, having moved three times just in the last six months, the problem mostly being work for Laydee’s father and that slew of children wrecking every place they got.

It took awhile longer, more driving, tracking down relatives, last jobs, with so much sodden tape on the hose Luther had to strip it off and start all over again, and then had come the day at last when here she was, Laydee Dwelley herself, grinning through the rusted screen, with the prettiest baby in her arms, the cream-colored image of its daddy.

A tiny girl, Laydee had clear skin, big bright eyes, and a soft little nose that squished against Montague’s chest. He hugged her so tight for so long the baby started to cry between them. He let go and she gave a squeal as she looked past him to the young man springing up the steps, and he was grinning, too, as he turned so fast he wobbled dizzily, then grabbed her shoulder to steady himself, but it was Luther. Only Luther. Luther eager for his revenge, if not on Earlie, then on someone. Clearly it was not going to matter. Luther was swearing, and the three of them knew, and it was right then that Montague’s heart started breaking off into chunks that floated through his bloodstream. Even now, weeks later, he could still feel them throbbing throughout his body.

“He ain’t here,” she said.

“But he’s coming. He’s coming,” he insisted with the urgency of the 302 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

wheels that still seemed to be rolling under him. “He started back such a long time ago. Be a month by now. Maybe two.” It was hurt rising, pure hurt like a wall around his brain.

“End of May,” said Luther. “Beginning of June.”

“He ain’t been here,” she said, her whole face twitching. “I can tell you that.”

“But the boy said, he said Earlie told him. He knew your name and he knew Hankham, Mississippi,” Montague insisted.

“The boy lied,” Luther said and kept saying all the long way back, every time he brought it up, puzzling over the particulars of the boy’s tale that day, for instance Earlie’s generosity, especially when it came to kids, and Duvall’s money clip, silver with a fancy
D
engraved on it. “Now how’d he know, a boy like that, just coming along the street?” Montague would muse in his need to hone it all to a simple and unobscured gleam of light he could keep in the distance. The reply was inevitable, its voice dark and tired.

“Duvall told him. He lied for Duvall.”

“I don’t know, that just don’t add up.”

“Don’t make me say it, old man. Don’t.”

Well, it was a long way back. A long way still to go. Always low on money and gas, they were burning oil in a long black tail. Luther scowled over the wheel. Weeping, the old man had collapsed at Laydee’s feet. Certain he was dying, Luther had carried him like a baby into the car. The old man started begging and gasping and then his eyes rolled back to whites, and Luther couldn’t stand it any longer. Yes, yes, he had finally relented. They’d find Earlie.

“Something must’ve happened, I know that.” Montague sighed. It was as much as he’d admit. He was still not eating or sleeping and now barely taking liquids to cut down on the stops.

“Yah, something happen, old man. Something evil. Something name Omar Duvall’s what happen.”

I
t was that hour late in a summer afternoon when the stillness rose from the tree-lined streets like quiet from a well. It was the time when the calls often came. Her fingertips stained a fragrant green, Jessie Klubock knelt on the thick warm lawn dead-heading orange marigolds. She tossed the faded blossoms into the forsythia, where Harvey wouldn’t see them. The compost pile was in the corner of the yard, and way back there she might not hear the phone ring. The dog was buried next to the compost pile. That poor dumb dog. She didn’t miss him a bit. Of course she’d never admit it to Harvey, but she enjoyed gardening so much more now without the dog slobbering all over her and charging down the driveway, barking whenever anyone came up the street. And it was such a relief not having to endure Marie Fermoyle’s abuse every time she caught him in her yard. Yard! Jessie had sometimes felt like shouting back; you call that weed-filled, junk-strewn eyesore a yard? The house was a mess with its peeling paint and missing shingles. The garage roof was so sway-backed with rot that Harvey had SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 303

long ago forbidden Louis to ever go in there. The neighbors were disgusted, and a few had even threatened to speak to Marie Fermoyle. Someone really should, she thought, or, better yet, maybe they could all get together for a community fix-up, like in the old barn-raising days. Harvey had been hor-rified when she told him this. Marie Fermoyle didn’t want anyone’s help, he said. People should just mind their own business.

“Well, we could at least offer,” she persisted, aglow with the images of men on ladders scraping and hammering away in the hot sun while the ladies scrubbed windows and planted flowers from their own lovely gardens. “What would be the harm in that?”

“I couldn’t begin to tell you,” he sighed.

“That’s what I mean, Harvey! You, of all people! You know what that kind of life is like. How can you
not
help?”

“You don’t understand, Jessie. Sometimes the best you can do is to not make things worse,” he said.

She didn’t understand, but she knew enough to drop it. With him, anyway.

That was the difference between them. Life was too short to be passive. She started by calling Cynthia Branch, across the street. The Branches and Marie Fermoyle had not spoken since the night Cyrus fired his rifle into the air to scare off drunken Sam Fermoyle, who was beating on Marie’s front door. When the police came, Marie told them Cyrus had been shooting at her house, and he was charged with discharging a firearm within town limits.

Jessie had explained to Cynthia what a boost this would give Marie. She said she couldn’t imagine having to do all that Marie did on her own. And it could happen to any one of them. Who knew what the future held? They had to help one another; wasn’t that what life was all about? Especially the women…Then Cynthia interrupted and, choosing her words carefully, said she and Cyrus would be glad to do anything that would improve the bleak view through their picture window.

Next she called the Wilburs, who were always complaining about Marie’s unraked leaves blowing into their yard. Without a second’s hesitation, Sandy Wilbur said she and Jim would be there.

Judy Fossi said she’d plan all the food. And beer, they laughed. Plenty of beer to keep the hubbies happy. Dick Fossi, with braces on his legs from polio, would be clerk of the works. It was up to Jessie now to pick a day when Marie would be away. It would have to be a surprise.

Something like this was bound to make a difference. Not just for poor Marie, but for everyone. The screaming that went on over there was so depressing. It was toughest on Harvey, who’d grown up in a house like that, the trauma of which had kept him single until he was forty.

Jessie thought it symbolic that she’d met Harvey in a waiting room. She’d been waiting for her mother to come out of the doctor’s office and Harvey’d been waiting to go in. After years of painful joints his knuckles had begun to swell so much there were some days he couldn’t close his hand around his butcher knife or pull the trigger on his rifle.

304 / MARY MCGARRY MORRIS

Before they met, Harvey’s whole life had been long days at the Meatarama, with just about every weekend spent up at his camp. Now, with a wife and child, he only got to the camp a few times a year. Last spring he’d taken Louis, but they had to come home a day early. Everything had frightened him, snakes and spiders, moonlight shadows, and raccoons prowling on the tin roof. “Skittish,” Harvey had said, lip curled, disappointed, as if his son had somehow failed him, when the poor little boy just wasn’t used to sleeping out in the woods like that. It was the closest she’d ever come to disliking her husband.

Their worst arguments had been in June, when Louis began crawling into their bed every night, convinced that bad men with knives were trying to climb through his windows. Harvey wouldn’t let Louis go over to the Fermoyles’ after that. Not only was Benjy too old for Louis, but something about the boy had always made Harvey uneasy. He said sometimes when he was working outside he’d look up and find Benjy watching him, which Jessie understood completely. Benjy was a lonely child without any men in his life, and he enjoyed watching Harvey work; it was probably some kind of novelty for him. But Harvey had been adamant; whatever the kid’s problems, he wasn’t going to have his son traumatized by them.

She had to admit Louis was happier now that he was playing around the block with children his own age, but she felt terrible seeing Benjy alone so much. The poor kid had lost Louis’s companionship and then the dog’s.

Well, at least she and Harvey were getting along better now.

Lately their most sensitive topic was deciding how to invest the money Jessie’s mother had left her when she died last year. In the last six months Harvey’s worsening arthritis had engendered a score of panicky schemes: They’d move to Arizona and buy land. They’d stay here and breed cocker spaniels. He’d build a greenhouse onto the back of the house and they’d raise orchids for florists. She knew their wisest investment would be to buy the Meatarama from Mr. Guilder and hire a butcher to do the work Harvey had done for the last thirty years. But each mention of it only mired him in days of gloom. She hadn’t brought it up since the morning he discovered the dog’s crushed body in the lilac bushes. They’d heard doors slamming across the way and Marie Fermoyle yelling and then Norm’s pitiful bellow, a wounded howl, as outraged as it was contrite.

Harvey had been at the table with his face in his hands.

“This isn’t right! Someone has to do something,” she’d said, heading for the door. “Things can’t go on like this! It’s just not right! It’s not fair to anyone!”

“No,” he’d pleaded, gesturing her back inside. “Don’t! Don’t,” he’d whispered as if he feared being heard. “Because that’s the worst thing. That’s the worst thing of all!”

Later, when Harvey was filling the grave, Omar Duvall had hurried across the driveways offering to help. But by then there was little left to do. When Duvall had first come, she used to feel a little thrill seeing him go in and out of the Fermoyles’. She liked to think of Marie falling in love, softening, SONGS IN ORDINARY TIME / 305

relenting. In the scenarios she played out, Marie wore clingy nylon dresses and bright red high heels. Jessie would do her dishes, gazing at the neglected little house, her knees trembling as she felt the intensity, the passion of Marie’s submission after so many years of loneliness.

Jessie had done her best to make Duvall feel welcome in a neighborhood where he was so clearly out of place. People were always asking her about the stranger at the Fermoyles’; “the riverboat gambler,” Cyrus Branch called him. At first she’d been intrigued by the white suit, the dark shirt, and the slicked-back hair. Now he gave her the creeps. In conversation he always stood with the close, unblinking scrutiny of someone examining a painting for the flaw only he knew existed.

That morning Harvey had leaned on the shovel talking to Duvall for a long time over the gouged lawn. Watching through the door glass, she had the strangest feeling that if she looked away something might happen. When Harvey finally came inside, he couldn’t stop talking about the brilliance of Duvall’s new merchandising operation. It just made so much sense, one of those ideas that’s so simple, so obvious, people don’t think of it. She kept washing the same countertop while he told her this was it, the opportunity he’d been looking for, but they had to be careful. Duvall said they weren’t to breathe a word of it to another living soul. She felt a tightening in her chest. Harvey said he could finally be his own boss and set his own pace.

What about buying the Meatarama? she asked. He’d be his own boss there.

He shook his head. Didn’t she get it? Didn’t she understand? He needed more out of life than a little butcher shop. All his life he’d been afraid, afraid of the unknown, afraid to take a chance, afraid what people would say, what they might think. Didn’t she remember asking him once why he couldn’t go out of his way a little to help Benjy Fermoyle? The truth was, he could barely look at that kid, because it was like seeing himself, not just then but now. Scared, always scared. Well, he was forty years old, damn it, and he was sick and tired of being scared.

The phone was beginning to ring inside the house now. She wiped her hands on her apron. She got up slowly, taking her time, for if she rushed, if she appeared too eager, then she’d be disgusted with herself. She closed the door and took off her apron. She looked at the phone as it continued to ring. If she got it, she got it, whoever he was.