The Grass Harp (31 page)

Now Olivia-Ann is worse, and that’s the truth! Only she’s not so bad on the nerves as Eunice, for she is a natural-born halfwit and ought really to be kept in somebody’s attic. She’s real pale and skinny and has a mustache. She squats around most of the time whittling on a stick with her fourteen-inch hog knife, otherwise she’s up to some devilment, like what she did to Mrs. Harry Steller Smith. I swore not ever to tell anyone that, but when a vicious attempt has been made on a person’s life, I say the hell with promises.

Mrs. Harry Steller Smith was Eunice’s canary named after a woman from Pensacola who makes home-make cure-all that Eunice takes for the gout. One day I heard this terrible racket in the parlor and upon investigating, what did I find but Olivia-Ann shooing Mrs. Harry Steller Smith out an open window with a broom and the door to the bird cage wide. If I hadn’t walked in at exactly that moment she might never have been caught. She got scared that I would tell Eunice and blurted out the whole thing, said it wasn’t fair to keep one of God’s creatures locked up that way, besides which she couldn’t stand Mrs. Harry Steller Smith’s singing. Well, I felt kind of sorry for her and she gave me two dollars, so I helped her cook up a story for Eunice. Of course I wouldn’t have taken the money except I thought it would ease her conscience.

The very
first
words Eunice said when I stepped inside this house were, “So this is what you ran off behind our back and married, Marge?”

Marge says, “Isn’t he the best-looking thing, Aunt Eunice?”

Eunice eyes me u-p and d-o-w-n and says, “Tell him to turn around.”

While my back is turned, Eunice says, “You sure must’ve picked the runt of the litter. Why, this isn’t any sort of man at all.”

I’ve never been so taken back in my life! True, I’m slightly stocky, but then I haven’t got my full growth yet.

“He is too,” says Marge.

Olivia-Ann, who’s been standing there with her mouth so wide the flies could buzz in and out, says, “You heard what Sister said. He’s not any sort of a man whatsoever. The very idea of this little runt running around claiming to be a man! Why, he isn’t even of the male sex!”

Marge says, “You seem to forget, Aunt Olivia-Ann, that this is my husband, the father of my unborn child.”

Eunice made a nasty sound like only she can and said, “Well, all I can say is I most certainly wouldn’t be bragging about it.”

Isn’t that a nice welcome? And after I gave up my perfectly swell position clerking at the Cash ’n’ Carry.

But it’s not a drop in the bucket to what came later that same evening. After Bluebell cleared away the supper dishes, Marge asked, just as nice as she could, if we could borrow the car and drive over to the picture show at Phoenix City.

“You must be clear out of your head,” says Eunice, and, honest, you’d think we’d asked for the kimono off her back.

“You must be clear out of your head,” says Olivia-Ann.

“It’s six o’clock,” says Eunice, “and if you think I’d let that runt drive my just-as-good-as-brand-new 1934 Chevrolet as far as the privy and back you must’ve gone clear out of your head.”

Naturally such language makes Marge cry.

“Never you mind, honey,” I said, “I’ve driven pulenty of Cadillacs in my time.”

“Humf,” says Eunice.

“Yeah,” says I.

Eunice says, “If he’s ever so much as driven a plow I’ll eat a dozen gophers fried in turpentine.”

“I won’t have you refer to my husband in any such manner,” says Marge. “You’re acting simply outlandish! Why, you’d think I’d picked up some absolutely strange man in some absolutely strange place.”

“If the shoe fits, wear it!” says Eunice.

“Don’t think you can pull the sheep over our eyes,” says Olivia-Ann in that braying voice of hers so much like the mating call of a jackass you can’t rightly tell the difference.

“We weren’t born just around the corner, you know,” says Eunice.

Marge says, “I’ll give you to understand that I’m legally wed till death do us part to this man by a certified justice of the peace as of three and one-half months ago. Ask anybody. Furthermore, Aunt Eunice, he is free, white and sixteen. Furthermore, George Far Sylvester does not appreciate hearing his father referred to in any such manner.”

George Far Sylvester is the name we’ve planned for the baby. Has a strong sound, don’t you think? Only the way things stand I have positively no feelings in the matter now whatsoever.

“How can a girl have a baby with a girl?” says Olivia-Ann, which was a calculated attack on my manhood. “I do declare there’s something new every day.”

“Oh, shush up,” says Eunice. “Let us hear no more about the picture show in Phoenix City.”

Marge sobs, “Oh-h-h, but it’s Judy Garland.”

“Never mind, honey,” I said, “I most likely saw the show in Mobile ten years ago.”

“That’s a deliberate falsehood,” shouts Olivia-Ann. “Oh, you
are a scoundrel, you are. Judy hasn’t been in the pictures ten years.” Olivia-Ann’s never seen not even one picture show in her entire fifty-two years (she won’t tell anybody how old she is but I dropped a card to the capitol in Montgomery and they were very nice about answering), but she subscribes to eight movie books. According to Postmistress Delancey, it’s the only mail she ever gets outside of the Sears & Roebuck. She has this positively morbid crush on Gary Cooper and has one trunk and two suitcases full of his photos.

So we got up from the table and Eunice lumbers over to the window and looks out to the chinaberry tree and says, “Birds settling in their roost—time we went to bed. You have your old room, Marge, and I’ve fixed a cot for this gentleman on the back porch.”

It took a solid minute for that to sink in.

I said, “And what, if I’m not too bold to ask, is the objection to my sleeping with my lawful wife?”

Then they both started yelling at me.

So Marge threw a conniption fit right then and there. “Stop it, stop it, stop it! I can’t sand any more. Go on, babydoll—got on and sleep wherever they say. Tomorrow we’ll see.…”

Eunice says, “I swanee if the child hasn’t got a grain of sense, after all.”

“Poor dear,” says Olivia-Ann, wrapping her arm around Marge’s waist and herding her off, “poor dear, so young, so innocent. Let’s us just go and have a good cry on Olivia-Ann’s shoulder.”

May, June, and July and the best part of August I’ve squatted and sweltered on that damn back porch without an ounce of screening. And Marge—she hasn’t opened her mouth in protest, not once! This part of Alabama is swampy, with mosquitoes that could murder a buffalo, given half a chance, not to mention
dangerous flying roaches and a posse of local rats big enough to haul a wagon train from here to Timbuctoo. Oh, if it wasn’t for that little unborn George I would’ve been making dust tracks on the road, way before now. I mean to say I haven’t had five seconds alone with Marge since that first night. One or the other is always chaperoning and last week they like to have blown their tops when Marge locked herself in her room and they couldn’t find me nowhere. The truth is I’d been down watching the niggers bale cotton but just for spite I let on to Eunice like Marge and I’d been up to no good. After that they added Bluebell to the shift.

And all this time I haven’t even had cigarette change.

Eunice has hounded me day in and day out about getting a job. “Why don’t the little heathen go out and get some honest work?” says she. As you’ve probably noticed, she never speaks to me directly, though more often than not I am the only one in her royal presence. “If he was any sort of man you could call a man he’d be trying to put a crust of bread in that girl’s mouth instead of stuffing his own off my vittles.” I think you should know that I’ve been living almost exclusively on cold yams and leftover grits for three months and thirteen days and I’ve been down to consult Dr. A. N. Carter twice. He’s not exactly sure whether I have the scurvy or not.

And as for my not working, I’d like to know what a man of my abilities, a man who held a perfectly swell position with the Cash’n’ Carry would find to do in a flea-bag like Admiral’s Mill? There is all of one store here and Mr. Tubberville, the proprietor, is actually so lazy it’s painful for him to have to sell anything. Then we have the Morning Star Baptist Church but they already have a preacher, an awful old turd named Shell whom Eunice drug over one day to see about the salvation of my soul. I heard him with my own ears tell her I was too far gone.

But it’s what Eunice has done to Marge that really takes the
cake. She has turned that girl against me in the most villainous fashion that words could not describe. Why, she even reached the point when she was sassing me back, but I provided her with a couple of good slaps and put a stop to that. No wife of mine is ever going to be disrespectful to me, not on your life!

The enemy lines are stretched tight: Bluebell, Olivia-Ann, Eunice, Marge, and the whole rest of Admiral’s Mill (pop. 342). Allies: none. Such was the situation as of Sunday, August 12, when the attempt was made upon my very life.

Yesterday was quiet and hot enough to melt rock. The trouble began at exactly two o’clock. I know because Eunice has one of those fool cuckoo contraptions and it scares the daylights out of me. I was minding my own personal business in the parlor, composing a song on the upright piano which Eunice bought for Olivia-Ann and hired her a teacher to come all the way from Columbus, Georgia, once a week. Postmistress Delancey, who was my friend till she decided that it was maybe not so wise, says that the fancy teacher tore out of this house one afternoon like old Adolf Hitler was on his tail and leaped in his Ford coupé, never to be heard from again. Like I say, I’m trying to keep cool in the parlor not bothering a living soul when Olivia-Ann trots in with her hair all twisted up in curlers and shrieks, “Cease that infernal racket this very instant! Can’t you give a body a minute’s rest? And get off my piano right smart. It’s not your piano, it’s my piano and if you don’t get off it right smart I’ll have you in court like a shot the first Monday in September.”

She’s not anything in this world but jealous on account of I’m a natural-born musician and the songs I make up out of my own head are absolutely marvelous.

“And just look what you’ve done to my genuine ivory keys, Mr. Sylvester,” says she, trotting over to the piano, “torn nearly every one of them off right at the roots for purentee meanness, that’s what you’ve done.”

She knows good and well that the piano was ready for the junk heap the moment I entered this house.

I said, “Seeing as you’re such a know-it-all, Miss Olivia-Ann, maybe it would interest you to know that I’m in the possession of a few interesting tales myself. A few things that maybe other people would be very grateful to know. Like what happened to Mrs. Harry Steller Smith, as for instance.”

Remember Mrs. Harry Steller Smith?

She paused and looked at the empty bird cage. “You gave me your oath,” says she and turned the most terrifying shade of purple.

“Maybe I did and again maybe I didn’t,” says I. “You did an evil thing when you betrayed Eunice that way but if some people will leave other people alone then maybe I can overlook it.”

Well, sir, she walked out of there just as
nice
and
quiet
as you please. So I went and stretched out on the sofa which is the most horrible piece of furniture I’ve ever seen and is part of a matched set Eunice bought in Atlanta in 1912 and paid two thousand dollars for, cash—or so she claims. This set is black and olive plush and smells like wet chicken feathers on a damp day. There is a big table in one corner of the parlor which supports two pictures of Miss E and O-A’s mama and papa. Papa is kind of handsome but just between you and me I’m convinced he has black blood in him from somewhere. He was a captain in the Civil War and that is one thing I’ll never forget on account of his sword which is displayed over the mantel and figures prominently in the action yet to come. Mama has that hang-dog, halfwit look like Olivia-Ann, though I must say Mama carries it better.

So I had just dozed off when I heard Eunice bellowing, “Where is he? Where is he?” And the next thing I know she’s framed in the doorway with her hands planted plumb on those
hippo hips and the whole pack scrunched up behind her: Bluebell, Olivia-Ann and Marge.

Several seconds passed with Eunice tapping her big old bare foot just as fast and furious as she could and fanning her fat face with this cardboard picture of Niagara Falls.

“Where is it?” says she. “Where’s my hundred dollars that he made away with while my trusting back was turned?”

“This
is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says I, but I was too hot and tired to get up.

“That’s not the only back that’s going to be broke,” says she, her bug eyes about to pop clear out of their sockets. “That was my funeral money and I want it back. Wouldn’t you know he’d steal from the dead?”

“Maybe he didn’t take it,” says Marge.

“You keep your mouth out of this, missy,” says Olivia-Ann.

“He stole my money sure as shooting,” says Eunice. “Why, look at his eyes—black with guilt!”

I yawned and said, “Like they say in the courts—if the party of the first part falsely accuses the party of the second part then the party of the first part can be locked away in jail even if the State Home is where they rightfully belong for the protection of all concerned.”

“God will punish him,” says Eunice.

“Oh, Sister,” says Olivia-Ann, “let us not wait for God.”

Whereupon Eunice advances on me with this most peculiar look, her dirty flannel nighty jerking along the floor. And Olivia-Ann leeches after her and Bluebell lets forth this moan that must have been heard clear to Eufala and back while Marge stands there wringing her hands and whimpering.

“Oh-h-h,” sobs Marge, “please give her back that money, babydoll.”

I said, “et tu Brute?” which is from William Shakespeare.

“Look at the likes of him,” says Eunice, “lying around all day not doing so much as licking a postage stamp.”

“Pitiful,” clucks Olivia-Ann.

“You’d think he was having a baby instead of that poor child.” Eunice speaking.