The Amulet

  Most days, after work, Sarah would ask Becca to drive around Pine Cone once before they went home. Sarah always said it was because she wanted a little fresh air after having been cooped up in the factory all day, and Becca every day agreed cheerfully, exclaiming, “What a good idea! Let’s do it!”—as if it were the first time that Sarah had asked such a thing of her. Becca was sure, in her own mind, that Sarah simply didn’t want to have to return directly to the house where Josephine Howell was waiting for her.

  Chapter 5

  Josephine Howell’s parents had lived in a small house halfway between the Weavers’ farm and Morris Emmons’ store, but that was long before either of those latter places existed. The house burned down, with Jo’s parents in it, when Jo was eight years old. The child, already stout, which was remarkable in an area where children of farm­ers more commonly suffered from malnutrition, was out picking pecans off the ground in a neighboring orchard at the time. Pecans sold for five cents a pound in Pine Cone, but they were proved much more valuable to little Josephine in that they preserved her life.

  The cause of the fire was never known, though it must be admitted that it was never really looked into either. After this accident little Josephine went to live with her only surviving relative, Bama, a second cousin (twice re­moved), who was old, infirm, and most people said, in­sane. Jo was sixteen when the old woman drowned in Burnt Corn Creek, in her eighty-seventh year. No one could ever determine what the old woman had been do­ing down there on the bank, since she had always main­tained to anybody who would listen how much she hated and feared running water. No one however much re­gretted her passing, and many were even relieved, for Josephine’s cousin had been a spiteful woman who kept grudges against the third generation of a family that had wronged her. She was poor, physically almost helpless, and had possessed no real influence in the scattered com­munity of farmsteads, yet it was thought very bad luck to be on the wrong side of her. This bad luck was a very corporeal thing, and would manifest itself in loathsome boils and ulcerations of the skin, at the best, and at the worst was evidenced in sudden violent death. But Ala­bama was a backward place then, where loathsome skin diseases and sudden violent deaths were not uncommon phenomena anyway.

  Before the meager wooden headstone had been raised on the old woman’s grave, Jo had married Jimmy Howell, a young dirt farmer, who didn’t know what he wanted out of life, and wasn’t smart enough to realize that what he most certainly didn’t want was a wife like Josephine. Even when she was young, and she married when she was no more than seventeen, Josephine Howell was both large-boned and fat. It is a shape ill-suited for the hard life of the spouse of a dirt farmer. Jimmy Howell had raised cotton while a bachelor, but Josephine complained so much of the difficulty in stooping to work with the plants, that he had switched over to corn, though it was a less profitable concern.

  Josephine would have refused to work the farm alto­gether had she not realized that her effort was absolutely necessary for their economic survival. She had not wanted children, had no wish for the bother of raising and caring for them; but after seventeen years of mar­riage, she gave her husband a son—not to please Jimmy Howell, but to provide a worker for the farm. Jo raised Dean with one object in mind: that he should take her place in the fields, and before five years had elapsed, Dean had proved himself already a better, more valu­able worker than his mother. Jo retired in triumph to her kitchen, with her radio, until Jimmy Howell died. Then she took the insurance money and the scant proceeds from the sale of their forty-acre farm (it had increased from thirty acres in their thirty-five years of marriage), and purchased a small house in Pine Cone, one that was old but still in fair condition. It had been one of the first to be built south of Commercial Boulevard. Jo had wanted a new house, but could not afford it. The whole of her life, she grumbled, had been like that.

  It was sometimes said, in the places where farmers gather, that Josephine Howell had driven her husband to an early grave with her sullen temper, her constant com­plaining, and her intractable laziness, just so that when he was dead she could sell the farm and move into Pine Cone, where she wouldn’t have anything to do but grow fatter than she already was, if that was possible. The problem was, that she had had to wait until Dean was old enough to support her, so that she wouldn’t have to do any work at all. The wives of these farmers whispered that her means of disposing of her husband had not been of the legal variety, but this has to be discounted as malicious gossip. It was well known that Jimmy Howell had died of a snakebite, though the doctor couldn’t tell exactly what kind it had been, and no one had seen the reptile. Two fang marks were found on the dead man’s leg just above the ankle, and it was very likely that he had been bitten in the field. Mal Homans was a farmer who owned acreage immediately adjoining that of Jimmy Howell, and whenever this story was repeated, Mal in­variably said: “I’d think it was Jo Howell put them marks on Jimmy’s legs with her own teeth, and it was poison out of her own mouth that killed him, except that she’s too fat to bend down that far . . .”

  Jo Howell paid no attention to what people said; she and her teenaged son lived quietly together in the small house, and much the greatest portion of Dean’s minuscule salary went to keep them in food. At this time, Dean was much oppressed by his mother and wanted desperately to leave her, though he knew that if he did, she would be forced to go on welfare.

  Dean wed Sarah Bascom much against his mother’s wishes, but this attempt to be free of Jo was a failure. Sarah was not fond of her mother in-law, but she insisted that Dean not abandon the woman altogether. When he lost his job, and the trailer was seized by the bank, Dean with his bride reluctantly returned to the house that be­longed to his mother.

  To Jo’s credit, she ignored the fact that he had treated her shabbily in the previous few months. On the other hand, she did not treat Sarah any more kindly though she knew that her daughter-in-law had stood up for her cause with Dean. Dean and Sarah had been living in the second bedroom of the house at the time that he was drafted, and now Jo was alone with Sarah.

  It was common knowledge that Jo Howell did not get along with her daughter-in-law, and that the household was not a cheerful one. It was Sarah who was invariably pitied, and in fact admired for putting up with Jo Howell’s harsh ways. Not only did Sarah work very hard to bring money into the household, had for a time sup­ported both her husband and his mother, but she waited on Jo Howell as well, performed all sorts of little services for that fat, lazy woman, who sat around the house all day long, watching television and eating Ritz crackers.

  Every afternoon at five-thirty, when Sarah Howell re­turned from the Pine Cone Munitions Factory, she found Jo Howell sitting in a rocking chair in their simply fur­nished, dusky living room. The sun was going down on the other side of the house, and the principal light in the room was from the television set. Jo usually pretended to be absorbed in the late afternoon movie, or whatever actress happened to be talking to Mike Douglas, so that she wouldn’t have to speak to her daughter-in-law. But on one afternoon late in March Jo Howell, with the re­mote control, turned off the set as soon as Sarah came in the back door.

  Sarah knew something was up, when she could not hear the television. She put the groceries down on the counter, and went directly in to Jo. The woman sat in her accustomed chair, grimly smiling. Sarah distrusted the woman, had never had any liking for her, and actually hated the way that she looked: oily and gross, with streaked, greasy hair pulled hard back from her face. Jo’s eyes were small and black, and loose flesh almost closed over them, especially when she looked hard at you.

  “Hey, Jo,” said Sarah, and tried not to let show the apprehension that she felt. But there was no sense in antagonizing Jo before she even knew what the matter was. Their argument would come soon enough, but some­times, when Sarah put a cheerful face before it all, she was allowed to get through an entire evening easily enough—and these days, with Dean gone, she really didn’t ask for much more than that.

/>   Jo replied nothing at all, but stared hard at her daughter-in-law. Sarah sighed then, a small sigh, and fell into the very corner of the couch with a mixture of fatigue, curiosity, and impatience.

  “Sarah . . .” began Jo, very slowly. Sarah was glad that she didn’t own a dog, because Jo looked as if she were about to inform her that it had just been run down in the road.

  “What, Jo?”

  “Army called, Sarah . . .” Jo was holding on to every word.

  “What’d the army want with you?” said Sarah trying, but not able to match her mother-in-law’s sullen deliber­ateness of tone.

  “Wasn’t me they wanted. They wanted to talk to you . . .”

  “What’d they want, Jo? I got to go put up the grocer­ies.” Sarah wanted Jo to get on with this; it wasn’t that she was worried about anything that Jo might have to say, she just didn’t want to give Jo the satisfaction of keeping her guessing, keeping her in suspense. It was one of Jo’s favorite games, and one of the most exasperating.

  “Dean’s coming home . . .”

  “Why,” said Sarah, involuntarily, in her surprise. “Why’s he coming home now? He got leave three weeks ago, and I didn’t think he could get it again so soon. He said—”

  Jo interrupted her. “Dean’s coming home for good.”

  Sarah moved her hand in a slight protest, and she gazed on Josephine Howell with annoyance and appre­hension.

  Chapter 6

  Summer comes early to south Alabama. Less than two months later, when Sarah Howell returned home from work a little after five, the air was stifling hot, and water from a late-afternoon shower burned off the driveway in a slowly dissipating fog.

  Jo Howell hated the heat because it reminded her of the years in the fields with Jimmy. In summer, all the cur­tains of her house were kept closed from early morning to sundown. This kept out only a little of the seasonal warmth, and all of the cooling breezes and cheering light. Sarah Howell moved directly through the kitchen, into the dim, close living room, paused a moment, and then resolutely entered her own bedroom.

  Double drapes were drawn close here, and the Vene­tian blinds behind them lowered; the room was almost wholly dark, and Sarah could see nothing until her eyes became accustomed to the lack of light. In those moments, when she stood with her hand behind her, on the knob of the door, she could hear the soft whirr of an oscillating fan, and beneath that, somewhere, the irregular breathing of two people.

  “Home late,” said Josephine Howell.

  Sarah could just make out the figure of her mother-in-law. She sat in an overstuffed chair that had been drawn out of its usual place in the corner to stand at the foot of the bed. “No, I’m not,” Sarah said, and glanced at the clock on the dresser: its luminous dial read 5:20.

  “Clock’s wrong,” said Josephine.

  Sarah did not bother to contradict her mother-in-law. There was something monumentally immobile about that great woman’s bulk oozed, for all the afternoon Sarah was sure, into the soft faded plush of that chair. Sarah had brought that chair from her parents’ house, one of the few pieces that survived the paying of the debts after their deaths. “So,” said Sarah, “you took over that chair too.”

  “You’re just lucky I’m here to take care of him during the day,” said Jo, with quiet malice.

  For the first time since she had entered the room, Sarah glanced down at the bed. In it lay her husband, his face and neck completely swathed in white bandages. His flat, tight stomach was bare, and below the waist he was cov­ered with loose pajama pants that had belonged to his father. The bed had been turned down but he rested, com­pletely still and breathing just perceptibly, on top of the sheets. Dean’s eyes were wrapped over, and the bandages were parted over the mouth, a simple black slit that wid­ened and contracted with the man’s breathing.

  Sarah stared a few seconds at the figure, refusing to admit to herself that she still couldn’t even recognize it as her husband. It was difficult to feel anything but revulsion for that anonymous body that responded to nothing, that only breathed and swallowed, and filled bedpans.

  Sarah glanced back to her mother-in-law. For the first time she saw that Jo had been sewing in the almost non­existent light, putting a new hem on one of her vast shape­less dresses.

  Jo nodded in the direction of her son. “Asleep,” she said briefly.

  “How can you tell?” asked Sarah. Since he had returned, Sarah had been unable to make out any changes or variations in her husband’s movements or reactions.

  “His wife ought to know,” said Jo.

  Sarah shook her head with fatigue mixed with despair, and sat in a straight chair beside the bed. She sighed de­spite herself and wearily removed her shoes. “Well,” she said, “I don’t. I can’t tell when he’s awake. I can’t tell when he’s asleep. I don’t know if he’s hungry, or wants to—”

  “You ought to feel them things, a wife ought to know her husband like she knows her own kitchen.”

  “He just lies there, though,” sighed Sarah. For the past week she had been relying on Jo to tell her what to do for Dean. She wondered if he ever heard them talking about him; Sarah didn’t like to address him directly, because it was like talking to a corpse.

  Sarah stood up out of the chair, and removed her dress. After putting it on a hanger back in the closet, she took a paper fan on a stick from the little rickety bedside table, and sat down again in her slip.

  Sarah fanned herself wearily, wondering how long she would be able just to sit still here without Jo lighting into her about something or other, something she had done, something she hadn’t done. There was bound to be some­thing.

  She thought suddenly how much she disliked the doctors at Fort Rucca—with the single exception of the one who had proved himself of so much assistance to her with the government forms—the doctors who had taken care of Dean after the accident on the firing range. They weren’t good men, she thought, and it wasn’t just because they had strange accents and came from different parts of the country; it was that they hadn’t seemed to realize that Dean’s life was ruined—probably just as she hadn’t realized at first that hers was ruined along with it.

  Becca had driven her over to Fort Rucca as soon as the news came, that very night. She had even offered to let Jo go along as well, but Dean’s mother only said, “He’ll be home soon enough. I’ll have plenty of time to be with him then. Besides, I ought to stay here and get things ready for him coming back, coming home for good.” Becca said nothing to this little speech, and if Sarah had not been almost beside herself with worry over Dean’s condition, she would have made a couple of little digs regarding the probable extent of Jo’s preparations for Dean’s homecom­ing.

  They had arrived past visiting hours, but Dean’s con­dition was so bad that it was thought that Sarah ought to be allowed to see her husband, while she still had the chance. It was really not known at first whether he would survive or, surviving, whether his wife would want him. He had already been wrapped in the bandages that he still wore. He made no special movement when she en­tered the room, when she came nearer his bedside, when she turned in tears and left. Kindly, the nurse had told Sarah that her husband was asleep, but Sarah had known better than that.

  They kept him seven weeks more. He was no longer in danger of dying, but there didn’t appear to be much life in him either. The doctors talked hopefully of the surface wounds healing more or less quickly, but they were more vague when they spoke of the good that could be accom­plished by a plastic surgeon in ameliorating his ravaged features, and could not be brought to speak a word of any operation that might help to restore the part of his brain that had been seared away in the blast of the exploding rifle. They told Sarah, in quiet voices, that they could not even know the extent of the damage until Dean had rested himself for some time, till he had got over the physiological shock of the injury to his head. That didn’t make sense to Sarah, but she must suppose that they knew more about what was wrong with Dean than she
did. Yet she had never got over the notion that something they knew about Dean they were not telling her.

  The doctors allowed Dean to return to Pine Cone be­cause they said there was very little that constant care at the hospital could do for him that could not be done better, or to more effect, with Sarah and his mother at home. It would have been a different case, the doctors continued, if they had not been assured that Dean’s mother was in the house all day to make sure that he was all right. But as things stood, he would probably recover quicker in familiar, congenial surroundings. He was to return to Fort Rucca once a week for a checkup, but when Sarah explained that she had no car in which to transport her husband, one of the doctors suggested that since he lived in Opp, it was no great hardship for him to go through Pine Cone once a week and check on Dean in his own home before he came to work at Rucca. Sarah said that she was thankful for this, as indeed she was; she would not have wanted to take too much advantage of Becca’s good nature to the extent of a weekly trip with Dean—though she was sure that Becca would readily have agreed to the inconvenience, and would never have admitted that it was a burden.

  This doctor, who lived in Opp, had taken a liking to Sarah, and one afternoon, had talked to her for a good half hour, advising her about veterans’ benefits for those disabled in the line of duty, even going so far as to secure for her the proper forms to be filled out, and promising to do what he could to expedite the matters. Of course there were to be no present charges for Dean’s medical care, nor would there be so long as he continued to see the doctors at Fort Rucca. But Sarah was warned that there might be—there would doubtless be—problems in the years to come, and she ought to be cognizant of what was Dean’s due in these things.