Leaving Cheyenne

  Gid never understood much about sex stuff, or at least I didn’t think he did. Maybe I didn’t understand it, or was wrong about it. I guess we were just raised different. Except for that one time with Richard, Dad never mentioned it—and then he hadn’t been talking to me, anyway. Momma died when I was still pretty young, but she wouldn’t have said anything about sex if I had got up one morning with triplets. It just wasn’t nothing Momma would have talked about. Whatever ideas us kids had about it, we come up with on our own. I guess I just didn’t have the background for thinking it was especially wrong; by the time I was eighteen or nineteen I would just as soon have had a baby as not.

  Gid and Johnny were the boys I started out liking, and they weren’t really go-getters in that respect. I guess their folks had thrown a scare into them. Then Eddie came along, and he knew just exactly what he was after and how to go about getting it. I didn’t have no idea atall how to stop him, or even that I was supposed to stop him. Besides, Eddie was exciting. But I hadn’t seen him five times when he got me down where I couldn’t get up, and then it wasn’t exciting, it was just plain hurting. I yelled to beat the band. It didn’t matter to Eddie. And he hurt me ever time, for six months or a year; I couldn’t see why a woman would ever want anybody to do her that way. But then I kinda begin to see one reason why: it was because a man needed it, and had it all tangled up with his pride, so that it was a sure way of helping him or hurting him, whichever you wanted to do. I hadn’t been doing nothing atall for Eddie; just letting him have a good time. He was really nasty about it and I thought I’d quit him. Only before I did I started getting where I enjoyed it as much as he did; then I got so I enjoyed it more than he did. And that’s when he quit caring anything about me: because he didn’t want me to like it—not for my sake—he just wanted me not to be able to help liking it if it was him doing it. But of course I could help it, and by that time anyway Gid and Johnny had got a whole lot bolder, and I seen where it could really do wonderful things for a man if a woman cared to take a few pains with him.

  I guess for a while I must have been pretty exciting to Eddie. It was after Joe was born that he completely quit caring about me. He still fooled around with me a lot, but he quit paying any attention to whether I liked it or not. He done what he pleased, and when he got done he stopped. One day I was just laying there watching him, and he said so.

  “Well, there ain’t but so much peaches and cream in any one bowl,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “And when they’re all eaten up you don’t have nothing left but a dirty dish.”

  I think Eddie just married me to show up Johnny and Gid.

  Gid was just the opposite of Eddie. He thought I was nice and pure and he was nasty and bad—it shocked him to death to find out he wasn’t my first boy. He just couldn’t believe sex was right. I don’t guess he left my bedroom five times in his life that he wasn’t ashamed of himself—in spite of all I done. I had to be careful where I touched him or he would jump like he was electrocuted. But he was the thoughtfulest man I knew, and took the most interest in me. He just wasn’t able to understand that I loved him and wanted him to enjoy himself—he got it in his head, but he never got it in his bones.

  Old Johnny did though. He had more pure talent for enjoying himself than Gid and Eddie put together. He could enjoy himself and pat me on the shoulder and sleep for a week, and I loved that about him. The right or wrong of it seldom entered Johnny’s mind.

  I always wished I had known Gid’s daddy better. I think he could have straightened me out on a lot of things that it took me years to learn by myself. He had the highest standards of any man I ever knew—to this day Gid worries because he can’t live up to those standards of his dad’s.

  One evening three or four months before he died me and him had a little talk. We were sitting at his kitchen table; Gid was out doing chores. I went over there a few times and cooked supper; they had had to batch for so long I felt sorry for them. Mr. Fry was in pain a lot of the time. I think he liked me, but I was always a little scared of him.

  “Well,” he said. “Some have to take and some have to give, and a very few can do both. I was always just a taker, but I was damn particular about what I took, and that’s important.”

  “Why, Mr. Fry,” I said. “Look at all you’ve give Gid.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “A good ranch he ain’t old enough to want and a lot of advice he ain’t constructed to use.

  “Them biscuits smell good,” he said. “Let’s get a head start on old Gid.”

  He buttered himself four biscuits. But I still had my mind on what he said.

  “I don’t guess I’ve ever done much of either one,” I said.

  “Aw hell,” he said. “You could take a million dollars’ worth, if you would. But instead you’ll give out twice that much to sorry bastards that don’t deserve it. And they won’t put much back. I’m glad you and Gid won’t marry. You’d smother him in sweetweed and he’d loaf the rest of his life. Misery makes a man work.”

  I was embarrassed, and he went on and ate his biscuits.

  “Anyway, it ain’t hurt your cooking,” he said, and he looked up and gave me one of the longest looks I ever had in my life. I remembered that look a hundred times, whenever Gid or Jimmy looked at me across a table; they both had Mr. Fry’s eyes.

  “Molly, if I was just ten years younger I’d take your whole two million myself,” he said. “The rest of the pack could go hungry. Gid would probably be the first one starved.”

  I couldn’t say a word. My legs trembled, and I was glad they were under the table. I was looking at his hands. Finally he took a match out of his pocket and whittled it into a toothpick. I thought when I seen him in his coffin that if he had been ten years younger he would probably have done just what he said.

  six

  On the last day of July I went into town to get some groceries and my mail, and to buy a war bond. Old Washington at the feed store had some new kind of chicken feed he wanted to sell me, and I stood around there talking to him about one thing and another till the middle of the morning. I never did buy the feed; I had more eggs than I knew what to do with anyway. I bought the war bond though—it was about the only patriotic thing I knew to do. When the war started they made me a plane spotter and gave me a lot of materials on what to look for, but no airplanes ever came over except the oil company’s Piper cub, flying the pipelines. Once in a while a big one would go over at night, but I couldn’t tell anything about it.

  I stopped in the drugstore a minute and drank a four hundred, and then went to the post office. My Good Housekeeping had come, and a new Reader’s Digest, and the rest of the box was full of sale circulars of one kind and another. When I pulled all them out, the letter dropped on the floor. I threw all the circulars in a wastebasket before I picked it up. Then I went over to the counter and opened it and read it, and my mouth felt dry, it felt like my lips were chapped. People kept going by me to get their mail; I don’t know who; they were just like shadows. Finally Old Man Berdeau, the postmaster, came out and tacked some kind of notice on the bulletin board, and then he came over to me and offered me his handkerchief. I didn’t think I was crying, but I was.

  “I’m mighty sorry, Mrs. White,” he said. “I guess they’re going to get all the boys before it’s over.”

  It was a month before I remembered to give him back his handkerchief. I walked out and started to look for Gid. I knew he had built a new house on the west side of town. On what they called Silk Stocking Avenue; he said they ought to call it Mortgage Row. People in cars kept stopping and offering me rides. I don’t know what I said to them. I knew the house by Gid’s car setting in front of it; then I seen him way at the back, digging postholes; he was putting up some kind of pen. He looked so surprised when I came running up to him; I put my face against his chest, so I couldn’t see anything. I could smell the starch on his shirt and the sweat under his arms when he put them around me.

  “They killed my
last old boy,” I said.

  “Molly, would you like to go in?” I looked at his house a minute, it was a big ugly brick house.

  “Let’s go home,” I said.

  He took me to his car and put me in the front seat. “I’ve got to go in a minute,” he said. I was hoping he wouldn’t bring Mabel out, and he didn’t. We went off.

  “Stop at the post office a minute,” I said. “I left my magazines.” He went in and got them; Mr. Berdeau had put them up.

  When we crossed Onion Creek I scooted over by him. “What’s life going to leave me?” I said. And when we stopped at the back gate I noticed the car wasn’t there. It was still parked at the post office, with the groceries in it.

  I didn’t really see Gid till we were sitting at the kitchen table. I had drunk my coffee but his was getting cold in the cup, and I reached out and put my hand on his wrist. When I saw the look in his eye I was ashamed of myself for being so selfish.

  “Drink your coffee,” I said.

  And I quit grieving for Jimmy; it was strange to feel myself quitting, but I couldn’t have cried any more right then if I had wanted to. I didn’t really think about him agin that day, and when I did the next day it was not me losing Jimmy I thought about, it was Jimmy losing his life and never getting to have it.

  Gid was there with me, at the table; I had never in my life been able to think of two men at a time. One would always crowd the other out.

  “Stay here tonight,” I said.

  That afternoon we sat on the porch, in the glider, and Gid talked more than he ever had in his life. He told me about his business, and his trouble with Mabel, and a lot of other things. It was a hot day, and we could see the heat waves rising off the pastures. I had a hold of one of Gid’s arms.

  “We’re the ones should have got married,” he said, during the afternoon. I didn’t say anything. I never did like to think about how much better things might have turned out if we hadn’t acted like we did. We did act like we did, and some bad things happened, but others would have happened if we had acted some other way.

  We did the chores and I cooked us a little supper and we turned on the lights and sat in the living room, and there wasn’t much to do.

  “Let’s play dominos,” I said. So we got out the card table and the dominos and played for three or four hours; neither one of us was sleepy. I got a lot of good hands and won more games than Gid.

  “Domino,” he said, and I laid down my hand and shuffled for long time. Gid had asked to see the one letter Jimmy wrote, and I had lied about it and said it was lost. Actually I had hidden it in a shoebox. I felt dry inside and out when I lied to Gid—he was so trusting and it was so easy to do. And part of me wanted to show him the letter; if I had he never could have left me again. But thank God I didn’t.

  “Well,” he said. “Maybe you’ll locate it one of these days. We can’t do nothing staying up.”

  It was hot that night; no breeze at all. I told Gid he ought to take his undershirt off, but he didn’t. He went right off to sleep. I got up three or four times during the night to sprinkle the sheets with water. I couldn’t get cool; I was dripping sweat. Once Gid woke up and raised up on his elbows a minute and seen I was awake.

  “We’ve covered a lot of miles together, haven’t we?” he said, and then went back to sleep. He always slept on his stomach. We had covered a lot of miles together—and we had covered a lot when we weren’t together, too, I thought. Tomorrow night I would just have the moon and an empty bed. I put my hand on his neck and there was sweat in the little wrinkles of his skin.

  I guess I slept a little; Gid was pulling on his Levis when I woke up.

  “I’ll go get the chores,” he said. “You stay here and rest.”

  “I can stay in bed the rest of my life, if I want to,” I said. And I got up and cooked while he tended the animals. We didn’t have much to say that morning. I went in to town with him so I could get my car. When we got to the post office I leaned over and kissed his cheek.

  “Many thanks for staying,” I said.

  “Why, Molly?” he said. “He was the only son we’ll ever have.”

  As soon as I got home I went to the hall closet and got the letter out of the shoebox and took it to the trash barrel and read it agin.

  DEAR MOLLY:

  This is just a note to tell you I won’t be home after the war, so don’t you’all look for me. If I never see Texas agin it will be too soon, as there are lots of other parts of the world I like better.

  Joe wrote me that you was afraid I would marry some Filipino girl and bring her home without telling you. Don’t worry, I am not going to marry no girl, Filipino or otherwise. I’m not very religious no more, this war has caused that, and I don’t take after girls any more, I take after men. I have a friend who is rich, and I mean rich, he says if I will stay with him I will never have to work a day, so I am going to. I guess we will live in Los Angeles if we don’t get killed.

  JIMMY

  I hope his rich friend loved him. He was a cruel boy, but I guess I had it all coming. After I burned the letter I went and got the basket and gathered yesterday’s eggs.

  seven

  I guess Gid told Johnny, because he came over right after dinner, that day that I burned the letter. I was glad to see him; he was just the one I was in a mood for. We sat on the glider awhile too.

  “Did you see Gid?” I said. “How did you think he looked?”

  He kinda grinned. “He’s taking it hard,” he said, “because he decided not to work this afternoon. That’s unusual. The last time Gid took an afternoon off was the day Sarah was born.”

  “It could have been worse,” I said. And in two minutes I had told him about the letter. Telling him didn’t make me feel any better—it just made me feel disloyal to Jimmy. But I had to tell it.

  “That’s terrible,” Johnny said. But the surprising thing was, Johnny was in a good mood. He tried to act solemn and sad, but he just wasn’t—Jimmy had never been close to him. Once in a while he would grin to himself about something.

  And I guess I was a bad mother to the end, because I began to feel good too. It was such a relief, somehow, that Johnny wasn’t really sad. Johnny could still sit there and enjoy life—I guess I had thought everybody would stop enjoying it forever because my sons were dead.

  “You know what I’d like to do this afternoon?” he said. “I’d like to gather up a pretty woman like you and go fish that big tank in the southwest corner. We ain’t fished that tank in nearly a year.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “It was last September, wasn’t it, that we went down there?”

  “Well, you’re the pretty woman I had in mind,” he said. “Do you want to go?”

  “Did you know I’m forty-three years old?” I said. “That’s about too old to be thinking about pretty.”

  “Why, I’m older than that, and I think about it all the time,” he said. “Besides, I know a lot of young pullets that ain’t thirty yet who’d trade looks with you this afternoon.”

  “It’s because I’ve had you to keep me fresh,” I said, and I smiled too. It felt good to really smile.

  “I’ll get us some worms,” he said. “You get your fishing clothes on.”

  I packed the old picnic box with some bacon and eggs and potatoes and the coffeepot and part of a mincemeat pie I had left over in the icebox. I thought we might just stay out and have supper by the tank if we felt like it.

  “Well, I didn’t know we was going camping,” he said, when he saw me putting the box in his pickup.

  “I just put in a skillet and some stuff to eat in case we don’t catch nothing,” I said. “I thought we might have a fish fry and do a little night fishin’.”

  “I got enough worms to catch half the fish in the ocean,” he said. “Look at them big fat grubs.” We put the poles in, and a few quilts to sit on, and left.

  The tank was still as a mirror, and the fish weren’t biting much. “I guess they don’t want to risk getting ya
nked up in this heat,” Johnny said. We spread the quilts at the south corner of the tank dam, under three cottonwood trees. The trees made pretty good shade.

  And Johnny couldn’t resist shade. Before we’d been there an hour he was sound asleep on the quilts, and I was left to do the fishing. I didn’t mind. We just had three poles, and they weren’t much trouble to watch. In the summertime I usually did my sewing while we fished. Johnny’s shirt had a rip in the shoulder, and I sewed it up and patched one of his socks while he slept. The tank and the country around it were just as still: there wasn’t even enough breeze to stir the cottonwoods. I watched the water and sewed and fished a little, and couldn’t keep much on my mind. Since Jimmy was dead, I could imagine that we had been closer than we were, and I let myself make up a lot of little scenes that never happened, where we were having fun together. Later I got to believing a few of them. I made up that Gid and I had married, and one fall he and Jimmy and me went to Dallas to the Fair. I never had been to the Fair, but Jimmy and Joe both went once, and Joe tried to bring me home some cotton candy; he didn’t have much luck. Johnny slept two hours and I only caught four fish worth keeping: three nice little cat and one good-sized perch. I quit on worms and tried a little bacon for bait, but had no luck. I was feeling too lazy to go catch grasshoppers. When fish don’t bite you might as well leave them alone.

  About five I woke Johnny up, because I knew when he slept too long he always felt sour and sluggish.

  “Supper ready?” he said.

  “I just do the catching,” I said. “You get to do the cleaning.”

  “I believe I’ll swim a little, first,” he said. “You want to come in?”

  I didn’t think it would fit too well with the day, for me to go in, so I said I would just dunk my feet. Johnny and I swum together a lot in the summertime, usually. I sat on the dam and cooled my feet down by the four fish, and he swum the tank a time or two and came out spluttering. He looked so cool I wished I had swum after all.