Miriam and Elinor looked up in one motion, and each with the same bland smile said, “Nothing...”
. . .
On the drive back to Perdido with the late afternoon sun shining blindingly in their eyes, Miriam demanded of her mother, “How do you know about that oil?”
“That’s my secret with somebody else,” said Elinor.
“What does Oscar say about this?”
“I haven’t told him yet,” said Elinor. “He still thinks it was foolish to put up money for that land.”
This amazed Miriam as much as anything she’d heard yet. “You mean you’ve told me, but not Oscar?”
Elinor nodded.
“Why?”
“Because,” said Elinor, “Oscar knows everything there is to know about trees, and he doesn’t know much about anything else.”
“I don’t know anything about oil,” Miriam pointed out.
“But you do know about making money for the family,” said Elinor, “and that’s why I came to you. If I went to Oscar, Oscar would say, ‘Elinor, we’ve got enough money as it is, and I don’t know anything about oil.’ But if I come to you, you’re going to go right out and see if you can’t make some money off it. A lot of money.”
Miriam considered this as they drove through Babylon. On the highway toward Perdido, she said, “Why should I do anything? I’m not going to make anything off it. Why should I take the trouble? All that land belongs to you and Oscar and Grace and Lucille.” This wasn’t said with animosity, merely with thoughtfulness.
“No,” said Elinor. “Grace and Lucille own a quarter of it, Oscar and I own a quarter of it, we gave a quarter to Frances and Billy, and...” She paused significantly.
“And?”
“And Oscar and I signed over a quarter of it to you.”
“To me?” Miriam exclaimed. “I don’t need any presents from you,” she added hastily.
“It’s not meant to be a present. Oscar thinks of it like that, of course, but I made sure you got some because I knew that if you didn’t have an interest in it, you wouldn’t do anything about it.”
“And I wouldn’t have!” said Miriam with pride in her selfishness.
“So one-quarter of that property is yours.”
“Why does everybody keep talking about it as Grace’s then?”
“Because it’s part of Gavin Pond Farm, that’s all. And we wanted to keep the details secret.”
“Does Grace know that it’s been divided up this way?”
Elinor nodded. “She knows that Oscar and I put up most of the money. It’s the same as with the will: we all have quarter-interests, Miriam. It’s not that you own any particular four thousand acres, it’s that you own a quarter of the whole—and that you get a quarter of any money that land brings in.”
“Does Grace know about the oil?”
Elinor shook her head. “Just you and me.”
“What would Grace say if we were to send people out there to start drilling?”
“My guess,” said Elinor, “is that Grace wouldn’t like it one little bit.”
“For the time being,” said Miriam thoughtfully, “we ought not to say a word to anybody.”
Elinor smiled. “A secret between you and me.”
“Yes,” said Miriam, with reluctance. “I guess. I’m going to have to do a little thinking about this. Have you told Billy?”
“No. Just you.”
“Let me speak to Billy, if you don’t mind. Billy could probably be of some help.”
“If you like. But please ask him not to say anything to Frances,” cautioned Elinor. “Frances sometimes speaks when she ought not to.”
“Don’t worry. Billy won’t say anything.”
For the rest of the trip back to town, the two women were silent. Elinor drove with eyes half-closed against the lowering sun; Miriam was lost in concentration. She looked up in surprise when Elinor brought the car to a halt in front of her house. “Oh, we’re here already!” she said in astonishment.
Elinor started to get out of the car, but Miriam held her back with a word. “That quarter-interest,” she said. “The quarter-interest you and Oscar signed over to me.”
“What about it?”
“That was a gift, wasn’t it?”
“Absolutely not,” said Elinor as she got out of the car.
. . .
The remainder of that evening, Miriam was lost to the world. She sat absently at her parents’ table, paid no attention at all to the conversation on the upstairs porch after supper, and later could not fall asleep for thinking of the oil that lay under the swamp. She did not even hear Sister’s knock on the door of her room.
The knock was repeated, and finally Miriam called out in the darkness, “Sister?”
“Miriam,” said Sister, opening the door softly. The hallway behind her was dark, too. “Miriam, am I waking you up?”
“No,” replied Miriam. “What’s wrong?”
“I wanted to speak to you. I couldn’t sleep.” Sister came in and sat at the foot of Miriam’s bed. Though only fifty-five, Sister seemed to have aged beyond those years in the past month. Her dress and hair were untidy, her air abstracted. She was worried, everyone knew, about Early’s return.
“Why couldn’t you sleep?” asked Miriam.
“I’m worried about Early.”
“I thought he’d already be here by now,” remarked Miriam. “It’s already the second week in April.”
“Don’t say that!” cried Sister. “I cain’t hardly eat for thinking about what I’m gone do when he comes back.”
“What are you gone do?” asked Miriam curiously.
“I don’t know!” wailed Sister. The darkness seemed to increase her woe. “I don’t know what to do! I feel like running away!”
“You’d better do it soon, then,” said Miriam matter-of-factly.
“Where would I go?”
“Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t want to go anywhere. I don’t know anyplace but Perdido.”
“You’ve been lots of places, Sister.”
“I haven’t been anywhere in ten years, it feels like.”
“Sister,” said Miriam with some impatience, “if you don’t want to live with Early, then you don’t have to. I don’t know what all this fuss is about. When he shows up, just tell him to go away.”
“I don’t even want to see him!”
“Then you go away. And let’s you and me just stop talking in circles about this.”
With a quick movement, Sister grabbed Miriam’s ankles beneath the bedspread. “You deal with Early.”
“I will not,” said Miriam. “Early is not my husband. This is none of my business.”
“Would you let him come in here and take me away?” demanded Sister, offended at her niece’s indifference.
“He cain’t take you away unless you decide to go with him. Besides, how do you know he still wants you? Maybe he’s just coming back to ask you for a divorce.”
“No, no! I know he’s not. He told me he wants to buy some bird dogs from Creola Sapp. If that’s not starting up a marriage again I don’t know what is. He’d have to have me to take care of his old damn dogs.”
“Sister,” said Miriam, “you are cutting off my circulation.” Sister let go of Miriam’s ankles and Miriam rubbed her feet about against the sheets to restore them. “Now listen, you are gone have to deal with Early, you are—”
Miriam never got any further with her advice, for at that moment the two women heard a car draw up before the house.
“Who in the world—” began Sister, but stopped in horror when she remembered suddenly just who was expected.
Trembling, she stood up from the side of the bed and went slowly to the window. Miriam got out of bed and followed her.
“Do you recognize the car?” asked Miriam. “It’s so late!”
Sister, peering through the screen, shook her head no. “Don’t turn on the light!” she cried. Miriam had crossed the room a
nd was fumbling with the switch next to the door. “He’ll see us!”
Miriam returned to the window just as Sister jerked back. “It’s Early,” she whispered. “Oh, Lord. Why didn’t I go when the going was good?”
Miriam peered cautiously out the window. “He’s gotten so old,” she remarked.
Having removed a single small bag from the back seat of the car, Early Haskew walked up the sidewalk to the house. He was quickly lost to sight by an intervening eave.
Sister, in her agitation, paced around and around in the darkened room.
The doorbell rang twice, and they heard Early’s voice call out, “Sister! It’s me!”
Sister stood stock-still and whispered, “Go away! Go away!”
The doorbell rang like a clarion in the still, dark house.
“We’re gone have to let him in,” announced Miriam, marching toward the door of the bedroom.
“No, no,” pleaded Sister, grabbing hold of Miriam’s arm. Miriam wrenched free and moved out into the hall. Sister followed her, pleading inarticulately. Miriam proceeded resolutely down the stairs, and Sister stayed at the top, convulsively grasping the newel post.
Downstairs, Miriam turned on the hall and porch lights, then pulled back the sheer curtains over the window in the door.
“Miriam?” said Early’s muffled voice. “That you?”
“Just a minute,” said Miriam, fumbling with the latch. She unlocked the door, then opened it. She unhooked the screen door and Early pulled it open.
“Hey, Miriam,” he said.
“Hello, Early,” replied Miriam. “We’ve been expecting you.”
“Where’s Sister?”
“Upstairs.”
“Early...” The word came as a strangled whisper from the darkened hallway at the top of the stairs.
Sister, in her near-hysteria, had forgotten the stoppered blue bottle on her bedside table. Now she turned and fled down the darkened hallway—even as she heard Early and Miriam’s voices downstairs—and raced into her room. She grabbed up the bottle, pulled out the cork, and drank the contents in two or three short gulps. She had expected bitterness, but the taste was cloyingly sweet, like undiluted blackberry syrup.
She put the bottle down and wondered what would happen.
But everything was the same; she felt no different. She still heard Early’s voice below, alternating with Miriam’s.
Ivey was getting old. Ivey was losing her touch. The syrup had been a mere placebo, to get Sister out of Ivey’s kitchen.
Despairingly, Sister shuffled out of the darkened room and went to meet her fate, in the person of Early Haskew.
She reached the top of the stairs and peered down into the darkness below. Why hasn’t Miriam turned on any lights? she wondered.
“Sister?” called out Early. “Sorry to—”
Sister started down the stairs into the blackness, but lowering her foot to the first stair, she realized quite suddenly that she was seeing nothing at all. The house was not merely dark and unlighted, she was herself blind. That was what Ivey had meant by “hurting.” Blind! How could Ivey have...Sister, having already been in a state of near-panic, now opened her mouth in a soundless scream. She tried to turn, perhaps with the thought of seeking refuge once again in her room. But her legs tangled themselves together, and she was unable to retain her balance. In a jumble of nightclothes and loose hair and flailing limbs she rolled from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Before Miriam could make a move, Sister Haskew lay broken and twisted at the feet of her returned husband.
Chapter 61
Early’s Promise
Early and Miriam lifted the unconscious form of Sister from the floor and laid her on the horsehair sofa in the front parlor. While Early stood helplessly over his wife, whom he hadn’t seen since the height of the war four years before, Miriam telephoned Leo Benquith, Elinor, and Queenie. Queenie became hysterical, Elinor calmed her down, and Leo Benquith examined Sister briefly. He telephoned for an ambulance, and Sister was moved to Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola that very night.
Three ribs and her left leg had been broken in the fall. She had hit her head severely, but roused from unconsciousness during the ride to Pensacola. Miriam and Elinor were in a car behind the ambulance, and Early drove in his car behind them. They weren’t allowed to see Sister until late the next morning. Though tightly bandaged over her chest and with her left leg raised in grotesque traction, they found her to be astonishingly and incongruously cheerful.
“Come kiss me, Miriam!” she cried. “And tell me you forgive me.”
Miriam leaned over the pillow and kissed Sister on the cheek. “I forgive you. But for what?”
“For being so clumsy,” Sister laughed gaily. “For falling from the top of the stairs all the way down to the bottom.”
“It was hardly your fault,” said Elinor. “It was dark and—”
“Was it ever!” exclaimed Sister. “I couldn’t see a damned thing! I was blind!” she giggled. “But I see fine now.”
“You had been asleep,” Elinor went on. “You were excited about seeing Early again.”
At the mention of his name, Early stepped forward to the foot of the bed and sheepishly waved to his wife with the hat he held in his hands.
“Hey, Early,” said Sister. “How you doing?”
“Fine, Sister, just fine.”
“Elinor, Miriam,” Sister whispered. “Y’all get out for a minute and let me talk to Early by myself.”
Elinor and Miriam exchanged glances. This was so unlike Sister’s attitude toward her husband before her accident that they were at a loss as to what to make of it. But, nodding to Early, they left the room.
“Sister,” said Early, coming around to the head of the bed, “I know you must be in pain—”
“I’m in terrible pain,” cried Sister. “You don’t know how much I’m suffering, Early. I am just so sorry this had to happen the minute you got back from wherever it was you were.”
“Guildford. That’s in England. Bridge work.”
“Lord, you do get around. You about to go off again?”
“Nope. Thought I’d come back to Perdido and fetch you and we’d go off somewhere and start raising dogs again. Sister, you cain’t imagine what it is like to go through life without a dog. I get so damned lonely out there building bridges and levees and I-don’t-know-what-all. Cain’t go carting a dog around Europe, though. They don’t allow it.”
“Well, Early,” said Sister. “Look at me in this bed.”
“I see you,” said Early, whistling.
“Do I look like I’m in shape to start feeding puppies with a nipple-bottle?”
“Only if somebody handed ’em to you.”
“Cain’t bring puppies in this hospital, Early. No dogs now, and no dogs for a long time to come.”
“When they say you’re gone be well again?”
Sister hesitated. “They don’t know. They don’t have any idea.”
“Those bandages look tight. Can you breathe?”
“It hurts to breathe,” admitted Sister, drawing in two or three difficult breaths. After a few moments, she had apparently recovered herself. “See, Early, what I was thinking was, it’s not gone be any fun for you to hang around Perdido while I am mending my broken bones. It’s not gone be any fun for you to wait on me hand and foot.”
“What happened to Ivey?”
“Ivey’s still there, but Ivey has to keep that house going. She doesn’t have time for me.”
“What about Miriam?”
“Oh, Early, you don’t know how hard Miriam works over at that mill. You never saw anybody work harder. Besides, Miriam’s not the type you want to ask to go down to the kitchen and fix a cup of coffee for you.”
“I guess not,” admitted Early. “Why don’t you hire a nurse?”
“I’m gone have to,” said Sister eagerly. “That’s just what I was thinking I was gone have to do. I’ll get the hospital to recommend somebody. That nurse can stay
in the spare bedroom, and take care of me all day every day. But see, with a nurse in the spare bedroom, there wouldn’t be any place for you to sleep, Early.”
“I’d sleep with you!” cried Early in surprise. “Where else would I sleep?”
Sister laughed nervously. “You old lummox! And roll over on top of me and break all my bones again? Early, in three years, you have gotten so fat! You are as big as a house.”
“I used to work it off,” said Early quietly. “But now it all just sits there. But you could punch me in the belly, Sister, and I wouldn’t even feel it.”
“Early, I cain’t even lift my arms. What I was thinking was, why don’t you go off again for a while—get a job somewhere just for the time being, go find yourself a river and build a bridge over it—and then give me a call and I’ll tell you when I’m gone be all right again. And when I’m all right again, you can come pick me up.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” said Early. “What would people think if I ran off and left you in this condition?”
“Lord, Early! People in Perdido don’t even remember who you are. Anyway, why do you care what they think?”
Early shrugged. He had seated his great bulk in a small wooden chair at the side of the bed. The substance of Sister’s conversation was beginning to register in his brain, and he understood that she was sending him away again. Sending him away not a dozen hours after he had arrived. His jowls went slack, and a look came into his eyes that reminded Sister of the puppies he loved so much. She struggled to maintain her resolve, even as she realized that he had begun to understand what was happening to him.
Then she did what she thought she would never have the courage to do. She spoke the unadorned truth.
“Early,” she said, “you and I aren’t married anymore.”
A look of bewilderment came into his eyes. “Did you get a divorce or something?”
Sister shook her head sadly. “I should never have married you. It was all my fault.”
“Hey...Sister,” protested Early weakly, “I love you...”
“I’m an old maid,” returned Sister. “Everybody knows it. I was an old maid when I was twelve years old, and I was fighting nature when I got married to you. Then when you went away on your old war work, I became an old maid the minute you walked out the door—and being an old maid is what suits me.”