Taking Lottie Home

  “Hello, Lottie,” Ben said.

  “You sure look nice, Ben.”

  A blush swept over Ben’s face. He glanced at the suit he wore, felt foolish. “I kind of overdressed,” he said. He added, “For the train ride.”

  “I like it,” Lottie told him.

  The boy peeked from behind her, tugged at her dress.

  “Ben, stop it,” Lottie said. She pulled the boy from behind her, holding him by his hand. “This is Ben,” she said. There was pride in the way she said the name of her son.

  “Hello, Ben,” Ben said. “That’s my name, too: Ben.”

  “This is the man you was named for, honey,” Lottie said. “Now when I say Ben, I guess you won’t know who I’m talking to.”

  “Maybe you better call us Big Ben and Little Ben,” Ben suggested.

  “I like that,” Lottie said. “Big Ben and Little Ben.”

  “He’s a fine-looking boy,” Ben said. “Looks like you.”

  Lottie shook her head, then ran her fingers through the blond hair of her son. “Looks like my daddy, some. Like my daddy looked when I was little. Got Foster’s eyes, though.”

  “How’s Foster?” asked Ben.

  “He’s inside,” Lottie said. “Just waiting for you. Come on in. See for yourself.”

  The cabin had a large center room with a stone fireplace on the back wall. An open-frame door led to the kitchen. Another door, closed, led to another room, a bedroom, Ben guessed. The shade-dark center room was sparsely furnished with a table and four chairs, a rocker near the fireplace, and a bed against one wall. Foster was in the bed, propped against pillows, a quilt covering him at the chest.

  “Well, by God,” Foster said in a hoarse whisper.

  Ben blinked in surprise. The man in the bed did not look like Foster Lanier. The man in the bed was a skin-covered skeleton. The skin was pale, the color of old straw. A film of perspiration glistened on his brow. His eyes were dull, drawn into his skull.

  “Hello, Foster,” Ben mumbled.

  Foster laughed weakly, then coughed. He lifted a hand, let it drop back to the bed. “God-o-mighty, Ben, you look like Arnold Toeman.” His voice was like escaping air.

  Ben forced a smile. He touched the front of his suit.

  “It’s his train-riding clothes,” Lottie said.

  The sound from Foster was like a sigh: “Uh-huh.” He scrubbed his head against the pillow. “Come over here, boy. Let me get a look at you.”

  Ben put down his suitcase and removed his hat and moved to the bed. Foster’s eyes seemed to float over him.

  “Put on a few pounds, it looks like,” Foster wheezed.

  “Some,” Ben said.

  A sad smile lifted in Foster’s face. “I lost a little bit,” he said.

  Ben did not reply. He reached across the bed and touched Foster’s hand.

  “Last time I seen you, you was in bed and I was the one standing by it,” Foster said.

  “That’s right,” Ben replied.

  Foster took Ben’s hand in his own and squeezed it lightly. “Glad to see you, Ben. Damn glad. Glad you come.”

  “I’m glad to be here, Foster.”

  There was a pause. Foster’s hand went limp on Ben’s hand and then he said, “No, you not.” He paused again, rolled his head away from Ben. “Hell, I wouldn’t be. You looking at a dead man, Ben. Been dead for a long time now. I just keep breathing, and Lord only knows why.”

  “Maybe you better see a doctor,” Ben suggested.

  The smile returned to Foster’s face. “Well, they’s not one close by, but it won’t do no good if he lived back there in the barn. Don’t take no doctor to know what’s going on here, Ben.”

  Ben could hear Lottie move behind him.

  “I—bought you something,” Ben stammered.

  “What’s that, Ben?”

  “I was talking to the man down at the store—”

  “Henry Quick,” Foster said.

  “That’s right. Mr. Quick. Asked him if he had a bottle me and you could share.”

  Foster coughed a laugh.

  “I thought it was about time I did the buying,” Ben added.

  Foster nodded wearily. “I’d be proud to take one with you,” he said.

  BEN WAS SURPRISED at the supper Lottie prepared. Garden beans and squash, tomatoes, onion, slices of cured ham, cornbread, tea from sassafras roots. Foster called it preacher food, but ate only a small piece of cornbread soaked in bean juice that Lottie served him in his bed.

  His mother had taught Lottie to cook, Foster said. His mother had died a year earlier, only a month before his own illness became serious.

  “But I swear, Ben, Lottie’s better at it than my mama was. My mama cooked the taste out of things.”

  Lottie smiled at the praise.

  It was after the supper, blue-dark outside, a cooling ground wind stealing down the spine of the mountain. Inside, a small fire burned in the fireplace, giving off heat and the aroma of hickory wood. Weak bubbles of yellow light came from two kerosene lamps. Ben had helped Foster move from the bed to the rocker and had tucked a quilt around him; then he had taken a straightback chair and placed it near the rocker, sitting close enough to hear the whispering that had become Foster’s voice. Lottie sat in another chair, holding Little Ben.

  “Did Henry Quick tell you how my mama saved his life?” Foster said in his whisper.

  “No,” Ben answered. “How’d that happen?”

  “Me and Henry was born a couple of months apart,” Foster said. “His mama died about a week after Henry showed up, and they wadn’t nobody to nurse him, so my mama done it. Nursed us both.” He paused, smiled. “Henry turned out ugly enough.” His smile became a coughed laugh. “Ugliest fellow I ever saw, I guess. Always told him he got the ugly tit and I got the good one. But he’s a good enough man, Henry is. Folks around here depend on him.”

  “He said he’d played ball with you,” Ben said.

  Foster bobbed his head. “Wadn’t much of a player, Ben. We put him over on first base since he was so rangy and had them long arms, but, Lord, he couldn’t catch much.”

  “I’ve seen some fellows like that,” Ben said.

  “What about your friend—Milo, wadn’t it? What’s he doing?”

  Ben was puzzled by the question. Anyone who followed baseball knew that Milo Wade was one of the great players of the game. He said, “Milo’s doing good. He’s with the Red Sox.”

  Foster frowned a question.

  “Used to be the Boston Pilgrims,” Ben added. “They changed the name a few years ago.”

  Foster nodded once.

  “And Nat Skinner’s playing up there, with the Philadelphia team,” Ben said. “You remember Nat? He pitched.”

  “Uh-huh,” Foster replied.

  “Nat’s doing good, too. About the best pitcher in the big leagues.”

  Foster sat, staring into the fire. In the firelight and the lamplight, Foster’s skin seemed as brittle as old parchment. After a moment, he said, “I miss it, Ben. What about you?”

  “Some,” Ben told him. “But I stay pretty busy at the store.”

  Foster inhaled sharply. He quivered under the quilt. “Lord, God-o-mighty, Ben, I miss it,” he said in a desperate, shrill cry.

  “Foster,” Lottie said quietly. “Don’t get worked up. It’ll start the coughing.” She looked at Ben. The look begged him not to talk about baseball.

  Foster bobbed his head again. He closed his eyes and began to breathe in even, deep sips of air.

  Lottie moved Little Ben in her arms, began stroking his hair with her fingers. She said to Ben, “How’s your mama and daddy?”

  “Uh, fine,” Ben said. “Mama is. My—my daddy died a few years back.”

  Lottie glanced quickly at Foster. “I’m sorry about that. He was a nice man.”

  “It’s all right,” Ben said awkwardly.

  Foster laughed softly. He pulled the quilt up, under his chin. “You remember Baby Cotwell, Ben?”


  Ben shifted in his chair. “Sure do.”

  “Somebody killed him.”

  “I know,” Ben said. He wondered if Foster remembered that Baby Cotwell had been killed in Jericho.

  And then Foster answered his thought. “Wadn’t me, in case you ever wondered. We’d already left when they found him. I thought he was headed back up to Tennessee with the midget. We heard about it later, and then the midget hung hisself.”

  “We sent Ben the story out of the newspaper,” Lottie said to Foster. “Remember?”

  A puzzled expression crossed Foster’s face, then vanished. “We did, didn’t we?”

  “Sure did,” Ben said.

  “He was a mean little bastard, that midget,” Foster said.

  “Wadn’t as mean as Baby,” Lottie said.

  “Sure wadn’t as big,” Ben said. “And I kind of doubt that he could hit as hard as Baby did.”

  Foster laughed softly. “I guess you ought to know. Lord, boy, you looked like they’d scraped you off a cowcatcher.”

  “But he didn’t get away with it, did he?” Lottie said. Then: “They ever find out who did it?”

  “No, they didn’t,” Ben answered. “They didn’t look too hard, I don’t think.”

  For a moment, no one spoke, and then Foster said, “When we started out, me and Baby, we had us some times with that show. They wrote big stories about us in some of them towns, bigger than anything I ever got when I was playing for real. If Baby hadn’t been crazy, we could of made a wagonload of money.” He wiggled his head in memory. “But after that, me and Lottie, we saw some places, didn’t we, little girl?”

  Lottie did not answer. She continued to stroke Little Ben’s hair.

  “You never saw Lottie dance, did you, Ben?”

  Ben flushed. He remembered Lottie in the tent, Lottie nude, Lottie in her dance.

  “She’d make men howl at the moon, by God,” Foster continued. “Lord, she was something. I’m telling you, Ben, she was something. Figured I’d better marry her, or have her walking off with somebody up to no good.”

  “All that’s over, Foster,” Lottie said simply. “All behind us. Best not to talk about it.”

  Foster lifted his eyes to Lottie, held them on her, and Ben watched their eyes speaking, saying words they did not need to utter, words that had already been said. Bitter words, Ben thought. Quarrelsome words. And he knew there had been great sadness as well as great love between them.

  A piece of the burning wood hissed and broke, and a spit of smoke, blue-gray, curled gracefully up the stone chimney.

  And then Foster said, “Ben, I want you to take Lottie home.”

  ELEVEN

  BEN KNEW THE bed was Lottie’s bed. The scent of Lottie, a clean scent, a flower scent, was in the bedclothing and in the pillow, and, Ben believed, he could feel the heat from her body, a lingering, soft heat. It was her bed, and the bed of Little Ben.

  He had offered to sleep on a floor pallet in the center room with Foster. Could keep the fire stoked, he had said.

  No, Lottie had told him. She and Little Ben would stay in the room with Foster. It was the way she wanted it, and the way Foster wanted it.

  “Sometimes he gets a coughing spell at night,” she had quietly explained. “I make him some hot tea and put in some of his drink. Makes him sleep better.”

  “I could do it,” Ben had volunteered.

  “No,” Lottie had replied.

  IT WAS PAST midnight, and still he was awake. There was a chill in the room, surprising to Ben, though he had guessed that nights in the Kentucky mountains would be cooler than in Jericho. In the Lottie-scented bed, he pulled the covering up to his face and lay still in her imagined body heat, and he thought of Foster’s request of him.

  Take Lottie home.

  “Always promised I’d take her home,” Foster had said. “Can’t now. Not now. You the only one I know I can count on for doing it.”

  Ben had protested gently. “You’re going to get better, Foster. You’ll do it.”

  “No, Ben, I’m not. No more going. Gone my last place.”

  “I just got a few days, Foster.”

  “Leave when you got to,” Foster had replied. “They’ll be going with you.”

  “We can’t leave you here,” Ben had argued.

  Foster had turned his face to Ben. “I got kin. They’ll be looking in on me.”

  Lottie had not said anything. She had merely gazed into the fire, holding Little Ben, stroking his hair, and Ben had known that what Foster asked was a frayed agreement between them. Probably something they had talked about, quarreled over. And from the look on her face, Ben had guessed that Lottie had more to say, but would be quiet until she needed to speak.

  “Will you do it, Ben?” Foster had asked in his whisper.

  And Ben had answered, “Yes.”

  It was the only answer he could give.

  And in Lottie’s bed, in the ghost space of her body, he could feel the weight of his promise settling on him. He thought of Sally and of his mother. How could he tell them of such promises?

  He closed his eyes, determined to dream of Sally. He did not. He dreamed of Lottie. Lottie before him in the tent, amber-pale light on her face and shoulders and breasts. Lottie had his hands in her hands, guided his hands to the nipples of her breasts, leaned to him, kissed him with her fire mouth.

  BEN AWOKE TO the touch of Little Ben’s fingers on his face. A horizon of sunlight cut across the bedroom from the window, and Ben realized he had overslept.

  “Breakfast,” Little Ben said softly, in a voice that was both baby and boy, the first words Ben had heard him speak.

  “Be right there,” Ben said. He could smell the odor of chicory coffee and fatback and biscuits from the kitchen.

  “Breakfast,” Little Ben said again.

  Ben pulled himself from the bed and dressed quickly in a pair of older trousers and shirt, and he wiggled his feet into the shoes that were comfortable. Little Ben stood at the bed, leaning against the bedpost, and watched.

  “Breakfast smells good,” Ben said, tying the laces of his shoes.

  Little Ben did not move or speak. His large blue eyes did not wander from Ben.

  “Your mama’s a good cook.”

  A smile, almost imperceptible, posed on Little Ben’s mouth.

  “C’mon, let’s go have some breakfast,” Ben said.

  “Breakfast,” Little Ben repeated. The smile broke free, grew into a happy laugh.

  BEN WAS STUNNED to find Foster sitting at the kitchen table with a blanket around his shoulders, feeding himself from a gravy-covered biscuit. A shine was in his eyes, his voice stronger: “Well, you look like you slept all right.”

  “Sure did,” Ben said. A fire was in the fireplace, warming the room. He could see Lottie in the kitchen.

  “Take a chair,” Foster told him. “There’s some of that coffee you brought us. I almost forgot how good coffee was.”

  Ben sat at the table. He took the coffee and sipped from it. Stronger than his mother made, he thought, but he liked the taste. And maybe it was the water the coffee was made from, the same water that made the bourbon Foster had bragged about.

  “That’s good,” Ben said.

  Foster leaned to him, stole a glance over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Had to show her how I liked it,” he said in a deliberate whisper. “Used to make it weak as well water.” He coughed a laugh, pulled the blanket tight to his shoulders. Under the blanket, he looked diminutive, a draped skeleton.

  Lottie came from the kitchen, carrying a plate of food—gravy biscuits, fatback, a hard-fried egg with the yellow yolk broken and spread over the white. “Foster wanted gravy this morning,” she said, placing the plate on the table in front of Ben. “Hope you like it.”

  “Sure smells good,” Ben said.

  Lottie sat near Foster. “Sometimes that’s all he wants all day—gravy and biscuits.”

  Foster coughed again, tucked his head, nodded agreement.

&
nbsp; Little Ben slipped near Ben’s chair, watching him curiously.

  “You eat?” Ben asked Little Ben.

  Little Ben nodded a shy nod.

  “Two whole biscuits,” Lottie said proudly. “One with gravy, one with brown sugar.” She motioned Little Ben to her. “Let him eat in peace, honey.”

  The breakfast was good and filling, and Ben ate slowly, took a second cup of coffee offered by Lottie, listened to Foster tell of his ancestors who had moved into the Kentucky territory in 1823. His ancestors had fought Indians, Foster vowed. Fought them until they began to marry them. Why, his bloodline was as much redskin as white. Why he had been blessed with such good eyesight for playing baseball.

  “Used to dream that’s what I was,” he said. “Indian. Used to dream I could shoot a dove on the fly with a bow and arrow.”

  “Don’t overtalk,” Lottie warned him. “You know how tired it makes you.”

  Foster ignored her with a shrug of his bone-sharp shoulders. He took more coffee, continued talking.

  “One time, Ben, my people owned every inch of land on this mountain.”

  “That right?” Ben said.

  “Cut my first baseball bat from a ash about a mile from here. Put it by the fireplace and dried it out over the winter and then whittled it out with a draw blade and pocketknife and rasp file. Rubbed it down smooth with a cow bone. Had a handle like a rock.”

  “What happened to it?” asked Ben.

  Foster sighed, cleared his throat. His voice had become hoarse and he was forcing words. “Batted with it a long time, then broke it in a game we was playing against some team out of Tennessee, just over the line.”

  Lottie moved from her chair to Foster. She said gently, “All right, that’s enough talking. You need to crawl back in bed and get some rest.”

  Foster did not reply, and he did not resist.

  “Ben, you take his other arm,” Lottie said.

  “Sure,” Ben said, and he helped Lottie guide Foster back to the bed. Then he stood back and watched as Lottie pulled the covers over Foster, purring to him as a mother would purr to a baby: “You sleep now. You sleep. We’ll keep the fire up. Me and Ben. We’re right here. Me and Ben and Little Ben.”