Little Bluestem: Stories from Rural America

  ##

  It was May when she called. First time. Phone was ringin’ nine o’clock on a Saturday. Came in from the barn and there was her voice, light as a bird’s, at the other end of the wire, reminding me how you just sort of grow together and how that other part, though missin’, is still there in your mind. And then, suddenly again, it takes on a voice.

  “Jimmy?” There it was, my name with her sound.

  “Delores? Baby, where are you?” I had forgot all about those bundles of oats. Instead, all of the loneliness of that wet spring came up into my bones like a damp moist ache and hung there with the sound of her on the phone.

  “Now Jimmy don’t get started about where I am. I am. I am fine, but I’ve been worryin’ about you.”

  “About me…?” Was just like her. Worried about my colds. And wire cuts. And how I was goin to hold up with the farm and the workin’. Looked at my ribs and worried about if I was eatin’ enough. Never talking much about herself or her feelings. Until she left. Just in that last week, when it was clear that the winter was running out into the first days of spring and that we were goin’ to be through the worst of it, then, it was like she sort of began to breathe in, look in, start thinking of herself. Sizin’ things up, I suppose, the long days ahead with plantin’, the long hours of lambin season slated for late March, a couple of calves due in April. And her life. Assisting at the beauty parlor over near Boaz, runnin’ the general store Friday morning for Mrs. Foster, then doin’ the checkout stand at Big Franks Discount in Readstown every afternoon. This and that. That and then This. Not much to come home to.

  “Am I goin’ to see you? You know I want to; Delores we never really talked.” There was this pause on the line. Like she was thinkin’ about that last word. It was a word that sort of stuck out and I don’t know why I said it. I’m not big on talk. Talk wastes too much. But I said it because I suppose I felt I should. I did want to see her.

  “No talk. You never like talk anyway and this is no time for us to get started with talk. No I was callin’ to make sure you was o.k. And to let you know I’m doin’ all right.”

  There was a softness, the same softness I had always heard in her voice, but behind it now a firmness—like she knew where the next word was comin’ from—that was pure new. I felt lost in losing her.

  “Well where are you?” I had this sudden thought of Delores on a street corner, standing with the hissing of traffic in the rain—buses and truck tires on the slick, blue-purple streets of some city just in back of her. And I had this pang. Like I never had tried. Never had called her folks. Never tried her best friend. Takin’ the occasional call when she didn’t show for work. The best I had done was call over at the Foster’s and ask if Delores had made it to work. That was the second day. No, she hadn’t, Mrs. Foster had said. “Is she sick? Hasn’t been lookin’ too good these last couple of times.”

  “Where are you, Delores? Can you tell me?” There was a silence then, like she was makin’ up her mind, and in the background I heard nothin’. No tires. No roar of diesel engines. But just before she speaks again a Meadowlark’s clear sound.

  “I got some friends in Tennessee. You never knowed ’em, I never mentioned them. Friends from the past. Good friends. And I’m with them now. Been down here most of the time since I left. And I’m workin’ in a little shop—novelty and antiques and hand-made furniture. And I’m good.”

  I thought of the trailer with the plastic veneer coming off the upper edge of the wall board in the hallway, the wallpaper peelin’ back in the bathroom because of the shower. The furniture set from Goodwill. Pots and pans of various sizes. The lack of plants. The thin, shriveled world of the TV. Cans of beef stew and TV dinners. Beer. Too much damn, cheap beer. Bundled up newspapers to be throwed waitin’ in the front closet. The hollow sound of the floor. The cold of the place runnin’ up into your feet. And I then I thought of antiques, satin glass maybe, and hand-wrought country furniture and her.

  It was a long stretch I was coverin’.

  “You callin’ from there?

  “Don’t you come down here, Jimmy, lookin’ for me!”

  “No. I just was wonderin’ if you was still there.”

  “Oh.” There was a sound of disappointment. Like she wanted more. Wanted me to say I was goin’ to look. Goin’ to search the state. Would be there sooner or later, just you see. But she just matched my quick “no” with her own word. And when it came back to me across the wire, it seemed full, settled —the sound of her oh, ringing across the lines. I guess I never wanted her hard enough, bad enough, to go after her. Here or there.

  She hung up then. Said goodbye Jimmy and click, she was gone.