“I think you’re wrong, Mama,” Ben had protested.
“And I think you’re still a little boy sometimes,” his mother had replied.
If his mother could see that Lottie might have affection for him, could she see anything else? Ben wondered. Something he could not see. Something about Lottie that he seemed to sense, but did not understand.
Lottie had arrived from work an hour later than usual, her face blushed from the heat. She had heard the news of the engagement from his mother, and had turned to him, offering a smile. Her only words had been “That’s good.” And then she had excused herself to change clothes and to play with Little Ben. Throughout their supper, and the making and eating of the ice cream, she had seemed remote and preoccupied. It was not in her behavior, or what she said—or didn’t say—but in a mood that seemed to wrap around her like an invisible shroud.
And perhaps, Ben thought, she was merely tired from the work in Ledford’s, or she had grown weary of the role-playing to protect him. There were times when he caught her gazing out of a window, and the cast of her eyes went far beyond their seeing. In those times, Ben believed she was unbearably lonely, and that she missed the traveling of the carnival and the places she had visited. Missed the pitched tents with quilt flooring, the smell of earth and lantern oil. Missed the trickery of silk-scarf magic and the calling of drumbeat and calliope whistle, like an anthem for wanderers. Missed the hope of dreams promised by slicksters selling chances at winning cheap prizes.
Curiously, at such times Ben did not think that Lottie missed Foster as much as she did the carnival. If she did, she did not show it. She had spoken to him only once of Foster since arriving in Jericho, and that was the first night, in her promise not to talk of his visit to Kentucky.
Yet, at other times, he watched her huddled with Little Ben, her face tucked against Little Ben’s face, and he knew that she was once again in Kentucky, sitting before the embers of a fire from the fireplace, listening for the rattle of Foster’s breathing, waiting for the breathing to stop.
In a few days, when he was again at full strength, he would accompany her to Augusta, as he had promised Foster. He would explain to Sally and to his mother that he felt an obligation to Lottie, and that his duty to her would be done when he led her, and Little Ben, to the front door of her parents’ home. He would also say he wanted a day to find a suitable engagement ring in an Augusta jewelry store.
He pushed his toe against the porch floor, swaying the swing. It would be strange not having Lottie around, he thought. And Little Ben. Little Ben seemed born to the home. Without Little Ben, the home would be tomb-quiet.
The moving chain of the swing had the sound of cicadas.
He wondered if he would ever see Lottie Lanier after taking her home.
Maybe for the wedding. His mother would want to invite her, because she would want to see Little Ben.
But she would not come to the wedding, Ben reasoned.
When she left Jericho, she would disappear from their lives.
He heard his name being called and twisted his body to the street to watch Sally rushing toward him, lifting the hem of her skirt. She slipped onto the swing and folded her arms around his chest.
“Did you miss me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he admitted.
Sally stayed only long enough for ice cream and to sit again in the swing with her head nestled against Ben’s shoulder. She did not say anything about her mother’s sudden illness or her father’s advice to her. She was, Ben thought, more relaxed than he had ever known her.
Before she left for home, she asked, “Do you love me, Ben?”
“If I don’t, I think I’ve let myself in for a lot of trouble,” Ben told her.
“Just say yes, Ben.”
“Yes,” Ben said quietly.
“You’re going to make a wonderful husband.”
“And you’re going to make a wonderful wife,” Ben replied.
“Do you think of me as a little girl, or a woman?” Sally asked.
“Some of both,” Ben answered after a moment. “It’s hard to forget when you used to aggravate me to death, running around all over the place, keeping things messed up just to make me straighten up after you.”
“Did I do that?”
“Yes, you did.”
Sally leaned to him, kissed him. “I’m sorry. I’ll make up for it. I promise you.”
“You already have,” Ben said.
“How?”
“By growing up to be who you are.”
AFTER MIDNIGHT, LOTTIE again opened the door to Ben’s room and slipped quietly inside. Again, she was wearing the pearl-silk nightgown. Again, she knelt at his bed, took his hand and opened it and gently rested her face in his palm, like someone giving alms to a beggar.
“I’m glad for you,” she whispered.
“Thank you,” Ben said.
She looked up. Ben could see that her eyes were damp with crying.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I just had a dream,” she told him.
“What dream?”
“I dreamed it was me you married.”
Ben said nothing.
“I was dressed in a dress that was white as a cloud, Ben, and we were out in a field like the ones in Kentucky, and you were there, and so was Foster, and he was standing up by a tree watching us, a grin all over his face. The preacher was there, too—him and his wife, and Mr. Quick and some of the others, and so was your mama and Little Ben and Mr. Ledford and even Sally. And I was standing close to you and the preacher was saying we’d been married.”
She paused, sucked in a quick breath, rolled her face in his hand, leaving it damp.
“It’s all right, Lottie,” Ben said softly. “It was just a dream. Me and you, we’re friends. We always will be. I’d say you were dreaming that our friendship got married. I’ve had that same dream myself. Almost exactly the same.”
For a long moment, Lottie did not speak or move her face. Then she said, “I need to leave, Ben. I need to go on home.”
“I understand,” Ben told her. “Two or three more days, and I’ll be up to it.”
“You don’t need to go with me. I can go by myself.”
“No,” Ben said. “I promised Foster.”
Lottie nodded against his palm.
“A lot of people here wish you’d just stay,” Ben said. “Including me.”
Lottie stood. “I can’t,” she said.
“I could talk to Mr. Ledford about work,” Ben said. “I know he thinks you’re a good worker, and Mama would keep Little Ben. In fact, she’d probably steal him from you if she could.”
Lottie shook her head. She turned away from the bed. “I got to go, Ben. I can’t stay. If I stayed, nothing would be right.” She moved quickly to the door and out of the room.
Ben lifted his hand to his mouth and let his tongue tip the palm. He could taste the salt of Lottie.
TWENTY
COLEMAN MAXEY DID not understand why he awoke suddenly, fully alert, from a black, dreamless sleep, knowing where he had seen Lottie Lanier. The mind must keep working when the body shuts down, was Coleman’s theory. Like a pocket watch tucked inside a pocket. You couldn’t see it at work and you probably couldn’t hear it ticking, but still it worked, still unwound minutes and hours off the spring inside its steel casing. The mind had to be made up of things like watch springs, Coleman decided. And thinking hard and constant about something was like twisting a watch stem tight; it worked even when you were busy with other matters, or when you slept so hard you were only a breath or two away from death.
He sat up in his bed when the memory came to him, and he thought: Well, by God. That’s it.
Lottie Lanier was the same woman who had bought a quart of moonshine whiskey from him all those years ago when Ben Phelps had made the baseball hit against the one-armed giant and was later beaten up and the giant found murdered.
Coleman was sure of it. She was dressed better now, and
she was older, and she seemed to possess a quiet nature that could easily be mistaken for haughtiness, except for the gentleness of her eyes. Yet, in Coleman’s thinking, it was her eyes that gave her away. A man could not look into such eyes without being haunted by them.
The memory was immediately clear to him. A town boy hired for helping to set up the tents came to him late in the afternoon, saying one of the men in the baseball show wanted to buy a quart of good makings, and he told the boy—Farley Roberts was his name, now moved away—that he would have the order ready at first dark and to have the man meet him at the rail yard where the cars for the carnival had been routed and uncoupled.
He was startled when the girl appeared.
“You Mr. Maxey?” she asked.
“That’s me, little lady,” Coleman answered. “Who’s asking?”
“I come for the jar,” the girl replied.
“Well, by damn,” Coleman muttered. “I was expecting some fellow.”
“He sent me.”
A broad smile crawled over Coleman’s face. “You got money, or you planning on a trade?”
The girl thrust two dollars toward him.
“I’m up to trading, if you want to keep that for yourself,” Coleman told her.
The girl did not speak or move.
“Damned if you not the prettiest thing ever been in this town,” Coleman said eagerly. “You work the girlie tent when they got it up, don’t you?”
Still, the girl did not speak.
“Why don’t I throw in the jar and five extra dollars,” Coleman suggested. “And me and you crawl up in one of them train cars and get this deal done.”
The girl turned and started to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” Coleman called. “Where you going?”
The girl stopped and turned back. “To tell him what you said.”
Coleman laughed nervously. He had seen enough carnival gangs to know they stood together, and he knew he had pushed too hard in his bargaining. “Aw, I was just fooling around,” he said. He stepped to her. “Here’s the jar.”
The girl handed him the two dollars and took the jar and lifted her face to him and fixed him in her gaze. It was then that he put her eyes away in memory.
“Hope he likes it,” Coleman said weakly.
The girl walked away.
Coleman laughed softly, a cackle from his throat, and then he fell back on his pillow heavily, causing his bedsprings to squeak. He stared at a wash of moonlight in the corner of his room, a quaint light spill that had the appearance of a dangling triangle. He thought: I knew I’d seen her. He whispered in amazement, “Well, by God.”
ARTHUR LEDFORD SAW Coleman step from his shoe shop and wave, and he frowned wearily. It was twenty minutes before eight o’clock and the morning sun already baked the concrete of the sidewalk. Too early and too humid for Coleman Maxey, he thought. Besides, he had seen enough of Coleman over the past week, Coleman showing up to buy items he would never wear and for no other reason than to steal glimpses of Lottie Lanier. It was embarrassingly childlike behavior, making each visit a deplorable charade to be suffered. If possible, Arthur avoided Coleman and all men like him. He did not like the rough style such men adopted. They were barely civilized, and nothing seemed to matter to any of them—nothing beyond their lust and the pleasure of that lust. None of them knew the souls of women they pawed over. They knew only the heat of flesh and the swelling of their loins. Love, to them, was won in brawls of taking, not giving. None of them understood the conquering power of a gentle embrace, or the surrender offered in touches so light they seemed like water running warm over the body.
A weakness gathered in his chest. With Lottie, he had been like those men. Or, if people knew what he had done with her, they would think of him in such a way. Yet it wasn’t the same. To him, the tenderness had mattered. More than passion, more than taking.
Still, there was shame. Great shame.
He stopped at the sidewalk opposite Coleman’s store. He saw Coleman quick-striding toward him. He thought: Lottie. The memory of her body, slender and firm, pressed against him, and a surge of sorrow filled his chest.
“Arthur, wait up a minute,” Coleman called.
“Good morning, Coleman,” Arthur said in the voice he used in his store. “Warm enough for you?”
“It keeps this up, we better think about renaming this place Hell,” Coleman replied with a grin. He stepped onto the sidewalk to stand beside Arthur.
“I’ll bring that up at the next council meeting,” Arthur said.
Coleman’s grin turned into a laugh. He glanced down at the sidewalk. “Say, Arthur, you remember me telling you I thought I’d seen that girl you got working for you down at the store?”
“Mrs. Lanier?”
“Yeah, her,” Coleman said. “Lottie. That’s her first name, right?”
“Yes,” Arthur replied. “Why?”
“Well, I remembered,” Coleman said proudly.
Arthur could feel the muscles across his chest tighten. He tilted his head to look at Coleman. “You did?”
Coleman’s head wagged vigorously. “Sure did. Woke up in the middle of the night, bolt up in bed, and it come to me. She was working that carnival that come through here six or seven years ago, the one when Ben got beat up and that one-armed fellow got his head split open. I met her.”
A chill rippled over Arthur’s shoulders. He could feel his eyes blinking in surprise. “You must be mistaken,” he said firmly.
“Well, could be, I guess,” Coleman said, “but there’s some faces a man don’t never forget, and that’s one of them. I’m telling you, Arthur, that’s her, and it makes me wonder about her showing back up here with Ben. You ask me, there’s more to it than meets the eye.”
Arthur crossed his arms at his chest to calm the trembling. He said, “Have you mentioned this to anyone else?”
“You the first one,” Coleman told him. “Since she’s working for you, I thought you ought to be the one to know.”
“I appreciate that,” Arthur said quietly. “Personally, I think you’re wrong. I think she may look like somebody you’ve seen, but Mrs. Lanier couldn’t have been that same girl. She’s been living in Kentucky for several years now.”
“Like I said, it’s been six or seven years,” Coleman reminded him.
“That’s true enough,” Arthur said, “but we don’t want to harm the reputation of a good woman by making statements that could be wrong, do we?”
Coleman shrugged. “Never said I wanted to do that. I just thought you’d like to know, that’s all.” He paused, flicked a smile toward Arthur. “But if it is her, I’d say her reputation was in question a long time ago.”
“How’s that?”
“I told you: I met her. She was working the girlie tent as far as I could tell, even if they had that tent packed away when they stopped off here.”
For a moment, Arthur did not speak. He lowered his head and nibbled on his lower lip. Coleman Maxey was a despicable man who could not be trusted, yet he had no choice but to trust. “I’ll inquire into it,” he said at last. “But I’m going to ask you to do the gentleman’s thing, Coleman. I’m going to ask you to keep this between us. There’s more at stake here than the possibility that you may be right, and it’s personal with me. Maybe you don’t know, but Ben asked Sally to be his wife last night, and this is the sort of thing that could cast suspicion on him and bring great grief to my daughter. I don’t want that, and I don’t think you do either. Am I right?”
Coleman nodded again. He had never had a man of Arthur Ledford’s standing confide in him with such sincerity. “Lord, no, Arthur. I hadn’t heard about Ben and your girl getting promised, but I sure don’t want to be part of anything that could come between them. They’re fine young people.”
“Good. Let’s have it stay between us,” Arthur said. “At the appropriate time, I’ll find an opportunity to ask Mrs. Lanier about it—in a roundabout way, of course. I think I’ll know if she’s co
vering the truth. And then I’ll let you know what I’ve learned.”
“Fine with me,” Coleman told him. “And don’t you worry. You say so and I’ll take it to my grave.”
Arthur licked his lips. He stood stiffly and extended his hand to Coleman. “I’m in your debt,” he said. Then he inhaled and added, “I’m grateful for your friendship.”
Coleman grinned. He squeezed Arthur’s hand deliberately hard. “I’ll stand with you, Arthur, but I know I’m right,” he said. “I don’t never forget a pretty face, and me and you both know she’s got the prettiest face this town ever saw.”
ARTHUR WATCHED COLEMAN cross the street, lifted a hand of acknowledgment—of comradeship—when Coleman turned to flick a wave before stepping into his shop, and then he walked away, continuing toward his store, his pace slow, his legs lead-heavy, his mind aching.
He had not slept the entire night. Could not. What had passed from his thoughts, and from his lips, as prayer had seemed little more than hollow begging. He had wanted to say to God, and to Lottie, “Forgive me.” Yet he had not felt the condemnation of sin. Sadness, yes. Great sadness. And confusion. It had been impossible to hide under the covering of his bed from the presence of God, or of Lottie, and he had lain awake through the night, not moving, waiting for the voice of God, or of Lottie, to grant him pardon for his weakness. In the seeing of his mind, the eyes of God were murderous with anger. The eyes of Lottie were soft and merciful.
He could sense her face against his shoulders, the moisture of her breathing coating his chest, and he swept his hand over his throat to ward off the feeling.