The Grass Harp

  A twig fire fizzed under the tree; Riley collected leaves for it, while the Judge, his eyes smarting with smoke, set about the business of our midday meal. We were the indolent ones, Dolly and I. "I'm afraid," she said, dealing a game of Rook, "really afraid Verena's seen the last of that money. And you know, Collin, I doubt if it's losing the money that hurts her most. For whatever reason, she trusted him: Dr. Ritz, I mean. I keep remembering Maudie Laura Murphy. The girl who worked in the post office. She and Verena were very close. Lord, it was a great blow when Maudie Laura took up with that whiskey salesman, married him. I couldn't criticize her; 'twas only fitting if she loved the man. Just the same, Maudie Laura and Dr. Ritz, maybe those are the only two Verena ever trusted, and both of them-well, it could take the heart out of anyone." She thumbed the Rook cards with wandering attention. "You said something before-about Catherine."

  "About her goldfish. I saw them in the window."

  "But not Catherine?"

  "No, the goldfish, that's all. Mrs. County was awfully nice: she said she was going to send some dinner around to the jail."

  She broke one of Mrs. County's cinnamon rolls and picked out the raisins. "Collin, suppose we let them have their way, gave up, that is: they'd have to let Catherine go, wouldn't they?" Her eyes tilted toward the heights of the tree, searching, it seemed, a passage through the braided leaves. "Should I-let myself lose?"

  "Mrs. County thinks so: that we should go home."

  "Did she say why?"

  "Because-she did run on. Because you always have. Always made your peace, she said."

  Dolly smiled, smoothed her long skirt; sifting rays placed rings of sun upon her fingers. "Was there ever a choice? It's what I want, a choice. To know I could've had another life, all made of my own decisions. That would be making my peace, and truly." She rested her eyes on the scene below, Riley cracking twigs, the Judge hunched over a steaming pot. "And the Judge, Charlie, if we gave up it would let him down so badly. Yes," she tangled her fingers with mine, "he is very dear to me," and an immeasurable pause lengthened the moment, my heart reeled, the tree closed inward like a folding umbrella.

  "This morning, while you were away, he asked me to marry him."

  As if he'd heard her, the Judge straightened up, a schoolboy grin reviving the youthfulness of his countrified face. He waved: and it was difficult to disregard the charm of Dolly's expression as she waved back. It was as though a familiar portrait had been cleaned and, turning to it, one discovered a fleshy luster, clearer, till then unknown colors: whatever else, she could never again be a shadow in the comer.

  "And now-don't be unhappy, Collin," she said, scolding me, I thought, for what she must have recognized as my resentment.

  "But are you...?"

  "I've never earned the privilege of making up my own mind; when I do. God willing, I'll know what is right. Who else," she said, putting me off further, "did you see in town?"

  I would have invented someone, a story to retrieve her, for she seemed to be moving forward into the future, while I, unable to follow, was left with my sameness. But as I described Sister Ida, the wagon, the children, told the wherefores of their run-in with the Sheriff and how we'd met them on the road inquiring after the lady in the tree, we flowed together again like a stream that for an instant an island had separated. Though it would have been too bad if Riley had heard me betraying him, I went so far as to repeat what he'd said about a woman of Sister Ida's sort not being fit company for Dolly. She had a proper laugh over this; then, with sudden soberness: "But it's wicked-taking the bread out of children's mouths and using my name to do it. Shame on them!" She straightened her hat determinedly. "Collin, lift yourself; you and I are going for a little walk. I'll bet those people are right where you left them. Leastways, we'll see."

  The Judge tried to prevent us, or at any rate maintained that if Dolly wanted a stroll he would have to accompany us. It went a long way toward mollifying my jealous rancor when Dolly told him he'd best tend to his chores: with Collin along she'd be safe enough-it was just to stretch our legs a bit.

  As usual. Dolly could not be hurried. It was her habit, even when it rained, to loiter along an ordinary path as though she were dallying in a garden, her eyes primed for the sight of precious medicine flavorings, a sprig of penny-royal, sweet-mary and mint, useful herbs whose odor scented her clothes. She saw everything first, and it was her one real vanity to prefer that she, rather than you, point out certain discoveries: a birdtrack bracelet, an eave of icicles-she was always calling come see the cat-shaped cloud, the ship in the stars, the face of frost. In this slow manner we crossed the grass. Dolly amassing a pocketful of withered dandelions, a pheasant's quill: I thought it would be sundown before we reached the road.

  Fortunately we had not that far to go: entering the cemetery, we found Sister Ida and all her family encamped among the graves. It was like a lugubrious playground. The crosseyed twins were having their hair cut by older sisters, and Little Homer was shining his boots with spit and leaves; a nearly grown boy, sprawled with his back against a tombstone, picked melancholy notes on a guitar. Sister Ida was suckling the baby; it lay curled against her breasts like a pink ear. She did not rise when she realized our presence, and Dolly said, "I do believe you're sitting on my father."

  For a fact it was Mr. Talbo's grave, and Sister Ida, addressing the headstone (Uriah Fenwick Talbo, 1844-1922, Good Soldier, Dear Husband, Loving Father) said, "Sorry, soldier." Buttoning her blouse, which made the baby wail, she started to her feet.

  "Please don't; I only meant-to introduce myself."

  Sister Ida shrugged, "He was beginning to hurt me anyway," and rubbed herself appropriately. "You again," she said, eyeing me with amusement. "Where's your friend?"

  "I understand..." Dolly stopped, disconcerted by the maze of children drawing in around her; "Did you," she went on, attempting to ignore a boy no bigger than a jackrabbit who, having raised her skirt, was sternly examining her shanks, "wish to see me? I'm Dolly Talbo."

  Shifting the baby. Sister Ida threw an arm around Dolly's waist, embraced her, actually, and said, as though they were the oldest friends, "I knew I could count on you. Dolly. Kids," she lifted the baby like a baton, "tell Dolly we never said a word against her!"

  The children shook their heads, mumbled, and Dolly seemed touched. "We can't leave town, I kept telling them," said Sister Ida, and launched into the tale of her predicament. I wished that I could have a picture of them together. Dolly, formal, as out of fashion as her old face-veil, and Sister Ida with her fruity lips, fun-loving figure. "It's a matter of cash; they took it all. I ought to have them arrested, that puke-faced Buster and what's-his-name, the Sheriff: thinks he's King Kong." She caught her breath; her cheeks were like a raspberry patch. "The plain truth is, we're stranded. Even if we'd ever heard of you, it's not our policy to speak ill of anyone. Oh I know that was just the excuse; but I figured you could straighten it out and..."

  I'm hardly the person-dear me," said Dolly.

  "But what would you do? with a half gallon of gas, maybe not that, fifteen mouths and a dollar ten? We'd be better off in jail."

  Then, "I have a friend," Dolly announced proudly, "a brilliant man, he'll know an answer," and I could tell by the pleased conviction of her voice that she believed this one hundred per cent. "Collin, you scoot ahead and let the Judge know to expect company for dinner."

  Licketysplit across the field with the grass whipping my legs: couldn't wait to see the Judge's face. It was not a disappointment. "Lordylaw!" he said, raring back, rocking forward; "Sixteen people," and, observing the meager stew simmering on the fire, struck his head. For Riley's benefit I tried to make out it was none of my doing, Dolly's meeting Sister Ida; but he just stood there skinning me with his eyes: it could have led to bitter words if the Judge hadn't sent us scurrying. He fanned up his fire, Riley fetched more water, and into the stew we tossed sardines, hotdogs, green bay-leaves, in fact whatever lay at hand, including an entire box of Salti
nes which the Judge claimed would help thicken it: a few stuffs got mixed in by mistake-coffee grounds, for instance. Having reached that overwrought hilarious state achieved by cooks at family reunions, we had the gall to stand back and congratulate ourselves: Riley gave me a forgiving, comradely punch, and as the first of the children appeared the Judge scared them with the vigor of his welcome.

  None of them would advance until the whole herd had assembled. Whereupon Dolly, apprehensive as a woman exhibiting the results of an afternoon at an auction, brought them forward to be introduced. The children made a rollcall of their names: Beth, Laurel, Sam, Lillie, Ida, Cleo, Kate, Homer, Harry-here the melody broke because one small girl refused to give her name. She said it was a secret Sister Ida agreed that if she thought it a secret, then so it should remain.

  "They're all so fretful," she said, favorably affecting the Judge with her smoky voice and grasslike eyelashes. He prolonged their handshake and overdid his smile, which struck me as peculiar conduct in a man who, not three hours before, had asked a woman to marry him, and I hoped that if Dolly noticed it would give her pause. But she was saying, "Why certain they're fretful: hungry as they can be," and the Judge, with a hearty clap and a boastful nod towards the stew, promised he'd fix that soon enough. In the meantime, he thought it would be a good idea if the children went to the creek and washed their hands. Sister Ida vowed they'd wash more than that. They needed to, I'll tell you.

  There was trouble with the little girl who wanted her name a secret; she wouldn't go, not unless her papa rode her piggyback. "You are too my papa," she told Riley, who did not contradict her. He lifted her onto his shoulders, and she was tickled to death. All the way to the creek she acted the cut-up, and when, with her hands thrust over his eyes, Riley stumbled blindly into a bullis vine, she ripped the air with in-heaven shrieks. He said he'd had enough of that and down you go. "Please: I'll whisper you my name." Later on I remembered to ask him what the name had been. It was Texaco Gasoline; because those were such pretty words.

  The creek is nowhere more than knee-deep; glossy beds of moss green the banks, and in the spring snowy dew-drops and dwarf violets flourish there like floral crumbs for the new bees whose hives hang in the waterbays. Sister Ida chose a place on the bank from which she could supervise the bathing. "No cheating now-I want to see a lot of commotion." We did. Suddenly girls old enough to be married were trotting around and not a stitch on; boys, too, big and little all in there together naked as jaybirds. It was as well that Dolly had stayed behind with the Judge; and I wished Riley had not come either, for he was embarrassing in his embarrassment. Seriously, though, it's only now, seeing the kind of man he turned out to be, that I understand the paradox of his primness: he wanted so to be respectable that the defections of others somehow seemed to him backsliding on his own part.

  Those famous landscapes of youth and woodland water- in after years how often, trailing through the cold rooms of museums, I stopped before such a picture, stood long haunted moments having it recall that gone scene, not as it was, a band of goose-fleshed children dabbling in an autumn creek, but as the painting presented it, husky youths and wading water-diamonded girls; and I've wondered then, wonder now, how they fared, where they went in this world, that extraordinary family.

  "Beth, give your hair a douse. Stop splashing Laurel, I mean you Buck, you quit that. All you kids get behind your ears, mercy knows when you'll have the chance again." But pros' enfly Sister Ida relaxed and left the children at liberty. "On such a day as this..." she sank against the moss; with the full light of her eyes she looked at Riley, "There is something: the mouth, the same jug ears-cigarette, dear?" she said, impervious to his distaste for her. A smoothing expression suggested for a moment the girl she had been. "On such a day as this..."

  "...but in a sorrier place, no trees to speak of, a house in a wheatfield and all alone like a scarecrow. I'm not complaining: there was mama and papa and my sister Geraldine, and we were sufficient, had plenty of pets and a piano and good voices every one of us. Not that it was easy, what with all the heavy work and only the one man to do it. Papa was a sickly man besides. Hired hands were hard to come by, nobody liked it way out there for long: one old fellow we thought a heap of, but then he got drunk and tried to burn down the house. Geraldine was going on sixteen, a year older than me, and nice to look at, both of us were that, when she got it into her head to marry a man who'd run the place with papa. But where we were there wasn't much to choose from. Mama gave us our schooling, what of it we had, and the closest town was ten miles. That was the town of Youfry, called after a family; the slogan was You Won't Fry In Youfry: because it was up a mountain and well-to-do people went there in the summer. So the summer I'm thinking of Geraldine got waitress work at the Lookout Hotel in Youfry. I used to hitch a ride in on Saturdays and stay the night with her. This was the first either of us had ever been away from home. Geraldine didn't care about it particular, town life, but as for me I looked toward those Saturdays like each of them was Christmas and my birthday rolled into one. There was a dancing pavilion, it didn't cost a cent, the music was free and the colored lights. I'd help Geraldine with her work so we could go there all the sooner; we'd run hand in hand down the street, and I used to start dancing before I got my breath-never had to wait for a partner, there were five boys to every girl, and we were the prettiest girls anyway. I wasn't boy-crazy especially, it was the dancing-sometimes everyone would stand still to watch me waltz, and I never got more than a glimpse of my partners, they changed so fast. Boys would follow us to the hotel, then call under our window Come out! Come out! and sing, so silly they were-Geraldine almost lost her job. Well we'd lie awake considering the night in a practical way. She was not romantic, my sister; what concerned her was which of our beaux was surest to make things easier out home. It was Dan Rainey she decided on. He was older than the others, twenty-five, a man, not handsome in the face, he had jug ears and freckles and not much chin, but Dan Rainey, oh he was smart in his own steady way and strong enough to lift a keg of nails. End of summer he came out home and helped bring in the wheat. Papa liked him from the first, and though mama said Geraldine was too young, she didn't make any ruckus about it. I cried at the wedding, and thought it was because the nights at the dancing pavilion were over, and because Geraldine and I would never lie cozy in the same bed again. But as soon as Dan Rainey took over everything seemed to go right; he brought out the best in the land and maybe the best in us. Except when winter came on, and we'd be sitting round the fire, sometimes the heat, something made me feel just faint. I'd go stand in the yard with only my dress on, it was like I couldn't feel the cold because I'd become a piece of it, and I'd close my eyes, waltz round and round, and one night, I didn't hear him sneaking up, Dan Rainey caught me in his arms and danced me for a joke. Only it wasn't such a joke. He had feelings for me; way back in my head I'd known it from the start. But he didn't say it, and I never asked him to; and it wouldn't have come to anything provided Geraldine hadn't lost her baby. That was in the spring. She was mortally afraid of snakes, Geraldine, and it was seeing one that did it; she was collecting eggs, it was only a chicken snake, but it scared her so bad she dropped her baby four months too soon. I don't know what happened to her-got cross and mean, got where she'd fly out about anything. Dan Rainey took the worst of it; he kept out of her way as much as he could; used to roll himself in a blanket and sleep down in the wheatfield. I knew if I stayed there-so I went to Youfry and got Geraldine's old job at the hotel. The dancing pavilion, it was the same as the summer before, and I was even prettier: one boy nearly killed another over who was going to buy me an orangeade. I can't say I didn't enjoy myself, but my mind wasn't on it; at the hotel they asked where was my mind-always filling the sugar bowl with salt, giving people spoons to cut their meat. I never went home the whole summer. When the time came-it was such a day as this, a fall day blue as eternity-I didn't let them know I was coming, just got out of the coach and walked three miles through the wheat
stacks till I found Dan Rainey. He didn't speak a word, only plopped down and cried like a baby. I was that sorry for him, and loved him more than tongue can tell."

  Her cigarette had gone out. She seemed to have lost track of the story; or worse, thought better of finishing it. I wanted to stamp and whistle, the way rowdies do at the picture-show when the screen goes unexpectedly blank; and Riley, though less bald about it, was impatient too. He struck a match for her cigarette: starting at the sound, she remembered her voice again, but it was as if, in the interval, she'd traveled far ahead.

  "So papa swore he'd shoot him. A hundred times Geraldine said tell us who it was and Dan here'll take a gun after him. I laughed till I cried; sometimes the other way round. I said well I had no idea; there were five or six boys in Youfry could be the one, and how was I to know? Mama slapped my face when I said that. But they believed it; even after a while I think Dan Rainey believed it-wanted to anyway, poor unhappy fellow. All those months not stirring out of the house; and in the middle of it papa died. They wouldn't let me go to the funeral, they were so ashamed for anyone to see. It happened this day, with them off at the burial and me alone in the house and a sandy wind blowing rough as an elephant, that I got in touch with God. I didn't by any means deserve to be Chosen: up till then, mama'd had to coax me to leam my Bible verses; afterwards, I memorized over a thousand in less than three months. Well I was practicing a tune on the piano, and suddenly a window broke, the whole room turned topsy-turvy, then fell together again, and someone was with me, papa's spirit I thought; but the wind died down peaceful as spring-He was there, and standing as He made me, straight, I opened my arms to welcome Him. That was twenty-six years ago last February the third; I was sixteen, I'm forty-two now, and I've never wavered. When I had my baby I didn't call Geraldine or Dan Rainey or anybody, only lay there whispering my verses one after the other and not a soul knew Danny was born till they heard him holler. It was Geraldine named him that. He was hers, everyone thought so, and people round the countryside rode over to see her new baby, brought presents, some of them, and the men hit Dan Rainey on the back and told him what a fine son he had. Soon as I was able I moved thirty miles away to Stoneville, that's a town double the size of Youfry and where they have a big mining camp. Another girl and I, we started a laundry, and did a good business on account of in a mining town there's mostly bachelors. About twice a month I went home to see Danny; I was seven years going back and forth; it was the only pleasure I had, and a strange one, considering how it tore me up every time: such a beautiful boy, there's no describing. But Geraldine died for me to touch him: if I kissed him she'd come near to jumping out of her skin; Dan Rainey wasn't much different, he was so scared I wouldn't leave well enough alone. The last time I ever was home I asked him would he meet me in Youfry. Because for a crazy long while I'd had an idea, which was: if I could live it again, if I could bear a child that would be a twin to Danny. But I was wrong to think it could have the same father. It would've been a dead child, bom dead: I looked at Dan Rainey (it was the coldest day, we sat by the empty dancing pavilion, I remember he never took his hands out of his pockets) and sent him away without saying why it was I'd asked him to come. Then years spent hunting the likeness of him. One of the miners in Stoneville, he had the same freckles, yellow eyes; a goodhearted boy, he obliged me with Sam, my oldest. As best I recall, Beth's father was a dead ringer for Dan Rainey; but being a girl, Beth didn't favor Danny. I forget to tell you that I'd sold my share of the laundry and gone to Texas-had restaurant work in Amarillo and Dallas. But it wasn't until I met Mr. Honey that I saw why the Lord had chosen me and what my task was to be. Mr. Honey possessed the True Word; after I heard him preach that first time I went round to see him: we hadn't talked twenty minutes than he said I'm going to marry you provided you're not married a'ready. I said no I'm not married, but I've got some family? fact is, there was five by then. Didn't faze him a bit We got married a week later on Valentine's Day. He wasn't a young man, and he didn't look a particle like Dan Rainey; stripped of his boots he couldn't make it to my shoulder; but when the Lord brought us together He knew certain what He was doing: we had Roy, then Pearl and Kate and Cleo and Little Homer -most of them born in that wagon you saw up there. We traveled all over the country carrying His Word to folks who'd never heard it before, not the way my man could tell it. Now I must mention a sad circumstance, which is: I lost Mr. Honey. One morning, this was in a queer part of Louisiana, Cajun parts, he walked off down the road to buy some groceries: you know we never saw him again. He disappeared right into thin air. I don't give a hoot what the police say; he wasn't the kind to run out on his family; no sir it was foul play."