The Elementals (14 page)

If food or other supplies were wanted or laundry needed to be done, Luker or Leigh or Dauphin drove over to Gulf Shores at low tide, when the channel was clear. India, not having completely excised the notion that Beldame was a place to escape from, had gone along on the first couple of these small expeditions; but she found that after Beldame, Gulf Shores was but a tawdry, cramped place. The people she saw there were not the kind to excite her imagination: in fact they were of the sort actually to depress her, possessing money certainly but not enough taste to hang around their necks on a string. It was the Redneck Riviera indeed. So after those first two trips India let the others go to Gulf Shores alone, and herself treasured an even more deserted Beldame.

In the late afternoon when the sun had abated its strength, everyone went back out onto the beach, and even India allowed herself a little time in the waves. The water on the Gulf side was always bright and clean, and even the scant seaweed there looked as if it had been fresh-washed. India, not used to swimming in the sea, had asked if she might not go in the calmer St. Elmo’s Lagoon, but Leigh had told her that no one swam there since Odessa’s little girl Martha-Ann had drowned eleven years before.

“Oh,” cried India, “I didn’t even know that Odessa was married!”

“She isn’t,” said Big Barbara, “and it’s a good thing too, considering what Martha-Ann’s father is like. Johnny Red gardened for us one year, and he stole my best azaleas!”

India’s favorite spot was the little course through which St. Elmo’s Lagoon and the Gulf were connected twice a day. It was about thirty feet wide, dry at low tide, and about three feet deep at high. Despite this shallowness, Luker warned her not to wade across it when it was full, and when she asked the reason for the caution, he was annoyingly vague. But at high tide, when the water of the Gulf rushed across and made of Beldame an island, India and Big Barbara sat at the edge of the channel and fished for crab with cane poles and minnows that India had captured with a large strainer. It was a homely occupation that brought grandmother and granddaughter closer than a hundred intimate conversations could have done.

These attenuated afternoons were an exquisite time, warm but not hot, with golden, lambent light, lasting always a little longer than they imagined it would, slipping suddenly into night. When the sun touched the horizon, they came in off the beach—waving and snapping their towels in the air, as if in ritualized farewell to the day—rolled out of the hammock and wandered inside the house, or trekked slowly back along St. Elmo’s Lagoon to watch the evening phosphorescence rise.

Supper was usually no more than a potful of boiled crab; and the taste was so sweet and fresh that they never grew tired of it. Evenings at Beldame passed with surprising swiftness. There was no television, and the single transistor radio was reserved for emergencies or terrible weather. They worked on the puzzle or played cards or word games or Scrabble and Parcheesi. India did her needlework and Odessa, sitting in the most distant corner, read the Bible. At ten o’clock, or a little later, everyone went to bed and immediately fell asleep, as if exhausted by a day of emotional frenzy or unceasing labor.

India, rather to Luker’s surprise, had taken immediately to Beldame, rarely spoke of New York, and never expressed the wish to return there speedily. She said, in fact, that she would be content to remain on the Gulf until Labor Day, the Wednesday after which she must begin school. Luker himself, who had long subsisted on late evenings and a wide acquaintance, had expected to chafe in the solitude of Beldame as much as his daughter. But he adapted as readily, reconstructing other indolent summers spent there. He did nothing, he thought of nothing; he didn’t even bother to feel guilty that he was not working. When Big Barbara asked him if he could afford to take so long a time off, he replied: “Oh, hell, the day before I leave, I’ll take a couple of rolls of pictures; and then the whole trip can come off of my taxes.”

“But you’re not earning anything while you’re here.”

“I could stand to be in a lower bracket this year.” He shrugged. “Don’t worry about me, Barbara. If I lack in September, I’ll come begging.”

Leigh had always been happy at Beldame—Leigh was happy anywhere, and under all circumstances. But this for her was one of the most pleasant interludes, following so closely as it did on the death of her mother-in-law. Against Marian Savage, Leigh spoke not a word now; after all, the woman was dead and could never defeat her again.

Dauphin perhaps benefited most from the seclusion of Beldame: away from his business, away from the Great House, away from friends’ clumsy ministrations to his grief. Marian Savage was truly mourned by only one person: her son, although he had little cause to love her as he did. Sister Mary-Scot had never made a pretense of affection for Marian Savage, and had at thirteen made a vow to God that if she were not married by the time she finished college, she would go into a convent. She refused two proposals in her junior year, and took her final vows on her twenty-third birthday.

Luker wondered that Beldame didn’t remind Dauphin as much of Marian Savage as had the Great House in Mobile, but to this Leigh replied, “There were times that Dauphin came here without her, and I have the feeling that he believes she’s still alive back in Mobile and that he’s just enjoying a little vacation away from her. You’ll notice that he didn’t bring Nails. Nails would have been too much of a reminder that Marian was dead.” But whatever Dauphin’s thoughts and motives, his spirit improved markedly over the weeks and something like cheer was added to his equable temperament and gentleness.

It was only Big Barbara who suffered in any degree, and that was because of the alcohol deprivation. She did not go into fits, but sometimes in the late afternoon she had urges to spin right down into the sand like a dervish or to scrape her skin with broken shells because of the impossibility of getting a drink. In her rare moments of anger she was more sullen and louder than was usual with her. She was irritable, impatient, restless, and always hungry. And it was only grudgingly she admitted that she felt a good deal better than she had in some months. In a particularly weak moment she promised that when they opened the cage and let her fly back to Mobile, she would continue her abstinence, “Though I know everybody in town is gone be saying I went to Houston to get Dr. DeBakey to remove that glass from my hand . . .”

Odessa was Odessa, and day in and day out voiced neither wish nor complaint but was at all times content and placid.

Chapter
13

In fact, Beldame as a whole for these weeks was content and placid, but the inhabitants realized this only when it abruptly ceased to be so, one Thursday morning late in June. It was then, just at the time that India was having her first cup of coffee, that Lawton McCray appeared in their midst, having arrived not in a jeep or a Scout, but in a small boat that he had rented in Gulf Shores. With him he brought a tall fat man who wore large glasses and a rumpled seersucker suit. Lawton was greeted with mild surprise, for his visit had not been at all anticipated; and his companion was treated with offhanded politeness, except by Dauphin, who was sincerely cordial to everyone.

And it was Dauphin whom they had come to see; and Dauphin, Lawton and the man in the rumpled suit—whose name was Sonny Joe Black—forthwith closeted themselves in the Savage living room.

“Lawton’s funds must be running low,” said Luker to his mother on the verandah of the McCray house. “Leigh,” he said, talking over his shoulder to his sister, “you ought to tell Dauphin not to give Lawton a penny. It’ll be down the tubes if he does.”

“But what if Lawton wins!” cried Big Barbara.

“Then Dauphin will just have to learn to live with the guilt of having helped to elect such a man to national office,” replied Luker.

Half an hour later, Lawton McCray ambled across the yard alone. A light rain was falling so that even the bristling white sand, pockmarked and shelled, seemed to take on the grayness of the sky. He sat on the swing next to his wife.

“Lawton,” remarked Big Barbara, “we had no idea to expect you today!”

“If y’all would get a telephone put in here I could have called. They got phones in Gasque, they could have ’em out here.”

“Dauphin doesn’t want to ruin the view with telephone poles,” said Leigh, “and I agree with him. We’ve never had a telephone out here, and we can get along all right a while longer I guess.”

“Barbara,” said her husband, “how you doing?”

“I’m fine.”

“How’s she doing?” asked Lawton of his son.

“She’s just fine,” replied Luker sullenly. Lawton always spoiled Luker’s day.

“She’s just fine!” cried Leigh and India together, before they had to be asked.

“Who’s that man you brought out here?” demanded Luker. “What’s he want with Dauphin?”

“Oh, you know,” said Lawton McCray, “talking business—just talking business.”

“What kind of business, Daddy?” asked Leigh.

Lawton McCray slowly shrugged his wide soft shoulders, and instead of answering his daughter’s question, he said, “I wanted to talk to y’all ’bout something for a few minutes. Now I can pretty much tell that all of you are having just about the time of your lives down here”—he glanced around the gray rainy vista that Beldame afforded that afternoon—“but it sure would be a favor to me if y’all would just think about coming back to Mobile for a few days around the Fourth. There’s gone be meetings and parties and all like that and it wouldn’t do me a bit of harm in the world, Barbara, if you went to a couple of ’em with me.”

“You sure you trust me to get through it all right? You not afraid I’m gone throw up on the after-dinner speaker?”

“I can tell, Barbara, you’re doing just real good down here. Luker and Leigh—they’ve been taking good care of you. It’s made a difference. If you would, I’d appreciate it if you’d come back for a few days—Fourth’s on Tuesday, I could use you ’bout Saturday to Wednesday, I s’pose. Some of those things you can go to with me, and some of ’em you can go to by yourself.”

“Oh, Lawton,” smiled Big Barbara, with shy gratitude creeping into her voice, “
’course I’ll come up. You want Leigh and Dauphin too?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. Never hurts to have Dauphin round—everybody thinks so high of Dauphin. And Leigh too. Nobody in Mobile got as much money and respect as Dauphin. You two doing all right since Marian died, aren’t you?” he asked his daughter.

“We’re okay,” said Leigh.

“When’s the money coming through?”

“Don’t know yet,” replied Leigh. “Dauphin’s got to go up in a few days and see about the will.”

“Don’t you want Luker and me to represent you too?” asked India blandly.

“Yeah,” laughed Luker, “India and I’ll give your campaign a little New York class. How’s that?”

“Thank you, Luker,” replied Lawton heavily.
“
’Preciate it, India. I’m glad to get
anybody
’
s
support, but I tell you, if y’all had rather just hang on here at Beldame, I’m not gone beg you away. I know y’all don’t get down here too often, and there’s no reason for y’all to have to mix in an election that y’all don’t really have much to do with . . .”

“I tell you what, Lawton,” said Luker, “one afternoon we’ll ride over to Belforest, and I’ll take a publicity photo of you standing on a pile of fertilizer.”

“Really do ’preciate it, Luker,” said Lawton gravely. “We’ll see about it.” He pulled at the sleeve of his shirt, which was damp with water that had fallen from the roof and splashed on the porch railing. “Well, y’all, I am about to be drowned out here. I am going inside and wait for Sonny Joe to get finished talking to Dauphin. Barbara, you want to come inside and talk to me for a couple of minutes?”

A little nervously, Big Barbara assented and followed her husband into the house.

“That man pisses me off,” said Luker to his sister and daughter.

“You ought not let him bother you like that,” said Leigh. “He’s always been just like that.”

“India, look through the window and see if you can see where they’ve gone.”

“They went upstairs,” said India, who had already been watching.

“He doesn’t want us to hear,” sighed Leigh. “Mama’s been doing so well—I hope he doesn’t say anything to upset her.”

“His just coming here upset her,” said Luker. “Didn’t you see how nervous she was?”

Leigh nodded. “Sometimes Daddy upsets her without intending to, I think.”

“Daddy is an asshole,” said Luker finally. He remembered how many times as a child he had seen Lawton escort Big Barbara to their bedroom; the two would remain there for an hour, and Luker could hear their voices, mysterious and low and earnest, through the walls. Big Barbara would emerge tearful and wanting a drink—no matter the time of day. Things hadn’t changed, it seemed; but now that he was thirty-three, Luker had some idea of what was being said in the bedroom upstairs.

Luker and India and Leigh sat silent on the porch; the swing chains creaked in the damp air. The Gulf was a silvering gray; pristine and cold, with a tide much higher than was usual. Now and then, when the wind was just right, they heard a word or two that was spoken upstairs in the house, by Lawton or by Big Barbara.

“I hate it when they go upstairs like that,” said Leigh, and Luker knew that she too had those memories.

With a newspaper to shield her head, Odessa strode across the yard from the Savage house and came up onto the porch. She seated herself in a chair a little removed from the others, drew her Bible out of a paper sack, and remarked: “Nothing much to do today but read . . .”

“They still talking over there, Dauphin and that man?” asked Leigh.

Odessa nodded.

“What are they talking about? Did you hear anything?” asked Luker.

Odessa nodded. “I heard. I was cleaning upstairs, and I heard what they were saying. I heard what Mr. Lawton said, and I heard what that other man said too.”

“What’d they say?” asked Luker again, his interest aroused by Odessa’s hesitant manner.