Cold moon over Babylon

  It was Thursday, the first of June. Margaret had graduated from junior high school the week before. At the ceremony in the gymnasium, Evelyn had wept and smiled with pride; Jerry had appeared overheated and uncomfortable. The next Monday, the first Boy Scouts would come out to the house after school and carefully pick the first ripening berries. Jerry and Margaret would pick too, and supervise the boys. The following week, many more berries would ripen, and the Girl Scouts would be enlisted as well. The front yard would be littered with bicycles. At her table on the back porch Evelyn would keep a record of the number of pints picked by each Scout, and would cover the baskets with cellophane wrappers that bore the name Babylon Farms and a crude drawing of the Styx River bridge. Early in the morning, Jerry would drive to Pensacola with the berries that had been gathered the day before.

  The picking would continue at this rigorous pace for at least four weeks, and the Boy Scouts be dismissed. Then only Girl Scouts would be allowed to come out, as gleaners, and Jerry would make the trip into Pensacola only every third day. After that, they would all lie back exhausted.

  In the sweet empty weeks following the season. Jerry would go fishing every day—not in the Styx, but in the Perdido—and Margaret and her grandmother would sew. Throughout the year, Evelyn Larkin took in piecework to supplement the farm income, and as a kind of apology to Jerry for not working in the patch. She had taught Margaret as well, and they traded off time on the sewing machine. Margaret made all her own clothes. She bought her materials at a seconds store in Pensacola, and few suspected that her wardrobe wasn’t store-purchased.

  Margaret was small boned and dark complexioned (in contrast to her parents and Jerry), with regular features that could be considered pretty by the sympathetic. She was soft-spoken, and reserved to the point of secretiveness. Her quietness and small stature made her seem even younger than she was. She had never been an exuberant child, but in the past few weeks she had seemed downright morose. Jerry imagined that his sister was suffering some sort of adolescent female trauma that he knew nothing about. Evelyn, knowing that her granddaughter had undergone menarche the year before, supposed it was only the summer doldrums that would disappear as soon as the picking began.

  Boredom was understandable. This was a week that was for the most part empty, the calm before the blue storm of the season. All the work had been done to prepare themselves and the bushes for the ripening. The cartons were stacked by the thousands on the latticed back porch, and Jerry had had work done on the station wagon, so that it would bear up beneath the daily loaded trips to Pensacola and back. He had talked to the Boy and Girl Scout troop leaders, and worked out schedules with them for the employment of the boys and girls. He had visited the shippers in Pensacola, and he had telephoned the distributors in Massachusetts and Illinois. Now there was nothing really to do but sit on the front porch, and pray that there would be no heavy rains in the six weeks to come.

  Chapter 2

  Evelyn Larkin was almost seventy. At the time of her marriage, she had been a cheerful woman, and had maintained that disposition even after her husband was struck dead by lightning in the pine forest. But during the three sorrowful anxious months in which she waited for Jim and JoAnn to return from their boating expedition, her eyes took on a cloudiness that never completely cleared. She was thin, nervous, prone to high blood pressure, and fell into small bouts of weeping once or twice a day of late.

  Women who have worked their lives away on farms age quickly, and rarely live to be seventy-five. Or, reaching that age, they appear a full generation older. It is a hard life that often precludes even the meager satisfactions of old age. For it is impossible to retire on a farm-— one works until death stays the hand. And, because of the structure of the Social Security system, Evelyn Larkin, who had never worked for wages, was entitled to only a very small monthly check from the government.

  She fared better than most country women, however, because she had left off working outside the house. She cooked and cleaned, and she took in sewing; and those relatively congenial activities in the past ten years had slowed her physical decay. But Evelyn Larkin knew that she had not many years left. This was a frightful thought to her, but she sometimes spoke jestingly to her grandchildren of the time when she would no longer be there, in an attempt to prepare them for her death.

  About five o’clock on the afternoon of the first day of June, Evelyn Larkin sat on the front porch of the farmhouse with Jerry. From here they could see the road to Babylon, fifty yards away. The large plot of ground before the house was crowded with the tall pine trees, but the underbrush had been cleared, and camellias and azaleas planted in clumps all about. The blueberry patch was just off to the right, and could be seen from the end of the porch. The Styx lay here and there visible through tangled shrubs and ground vines, and if you stood on the railing, you could just glimpse the bridge that crossed the river.

  Evelyn sat in a rocking chair near the front door, monogramming a napkin with a cursive A. Seven others, completed, lay piled in a small basket by the side of the chair. Jerry swung noisily in a swing at the end of the porch away from the river. He had listlessly picked up a two-year-old copy of Reader's Digest from a wooden magazine rack near Evelyn’s chair. The pages had warped from atmospheric dampness, and the cover was speckled with rot.

  “I sure do wish Margaret would hurry up and get home,” said Jerry languidly.

  “I do too,” sighed Evelyn. “I feel like starting supper, but I don’t want to till I know she’s here.”

  “Who’d she go to see?”

  “She said she was going over to the high school to help Mr. Perry take care of something or other. She likes to help him and he’s been real sweet to her. I hope she’s not just getting in his way though. I would have thought that she’d be home by now. She left here on her wheel right after dinner.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call it a ‘wheel,’ Grandma. A bicycle’s got two wheels, and you make it sound like it’s just got one. Margaret couldn't have made it all the way into Babylon if she just had one wheel to do it with.”

  Evelyn made no reply. She was used to Jerry’s frequent peevishness, and knew that he was only bored. She had tried to explain to him before, that when she was a girl, they called it a “wheel,” and she still thought of it that way, but Jerry had complained so often of this usage, that she didn’t bother explaining it any longer. However, she didn’t say “bicycle” either.

  “Jerry,” she said instead, let me run inside the house, and bring you out a lamp. I don’t want you to ruin your eyes reading without a lamp. Light’s beginning to fail out here.”

  Jerry tossed the Reader's Digest over his shoulder. “I’m not reading,” he said. “Besides, you’re sitting there doing embroidery without a lamp. You're the one's gone ruin your eyes, not me.”

  “Well,” said Evelyn, “doesn’t matter so much for me, my eyes have only got to last a couple of more years, but your eyes got to last you till you get as old as I am- “Don’t talk like that,” said Jerry impatiently.

  “I just hope Margaret gets home before dark.”

  “Not dark yet,” said Jerry contrarily. “It’s just because of the pines. If you and me walked out there to the highway, we’d probably he blinded by the sun.”

  “You think we’ll be able to hear her when she comes over the bridge?” asked Evelyn.

  Jerry shook his head. “Cain’t hear anything from the bridge.”

  “Well, I just hope she gets back before it starts to rain.” “Don’t say that, Grandma. I got two pints of berries today, and those were the first. The others are coming. I don’t want it to rain. If it was to be heavy, we could lose a lot. I don’t want you to say that.” He stood out of the swing, and moved to the railing of the porch, leaned forward between two large pots of fern, and tried to make out the sky above the trees. “Sun’s shining,” he said, “though you cain’t much tell it from where we’re sitting, doesn’t look like rain to me.”

  “Well,” s
aid Evelyn, realizing that Jerry was in fact very worried about the plants, “it probably won’t rain, but Margaret ought to get back before dark. Fourteen- year-old girls ought not ride their wheels at night. People in cars don’t always see people on wheels, especially when they’re small like Margaret.”

  She'll be back,” said Jerry reassuringly. They were silent some minutes. Evelyn rocked softly in the chair. The last napkin, not quite finished, lay pressed beneath her folded hands. Jerry moved from one end of the porch to the other, squinting up at the sky, and glancing anxiously around the corner of the house at the blueberry patch. At last he threw himself onto the sagging front steps, and folded his long arms above his knees. He was anxious for the afternoon to end and the evening to begin, and that wouldn’t happen until Evelyn started supper, and Evelyn wouldn’t start supper until Margaret returned from Babylon. It didn’t so much matter though, because Jerry knew that he would be just as restless by the end of the evening, and would impatiently look forward to the hour when he could get into bed with some hope of failing asleep. The season was exhausting, but it filled the days and evenings, and there was no time for reflection. Until the accounts were reckoned in August, it was possible for Jerry to imagine that this year the farm would be making money. Jerry began to lose himself in hopeful predictions of the season’s returns, placing them far above what he could reasonably expect.

  “It’s gone pour before I can get supper on the table.”

  Jerry said nothing now to contradict his grandmother, for he too had begun to smell the moisture in the air. He rolled his eyes upward trying to catch sight of the sky, but he didn’t crane his neck, because he didn’t want his grandmother to know that he was looking.

  He lowered his eyes suddenly to follow the hasty approach of a powder-blue Volkswagen that had just turned into the long driveway.

  Chapter 3

  “You think it’s Margaret?” Evelyn asked hesitantly and hopefully.

  Jerry didn’t bother answering. He knew that it was not. Margaret had left on her bicycle, and would surely return on her bicycle. Even considering, on the outside, that something had happened—a flat tire, or some such— Margaret would simply have walked back. Babylon was less than a mile away, though nothing but forest lay between the Larkin farm and the city limits.

  A young girl was driving the Volkswagen; she waved cheerily out the window before she came to a stop beside the house.

  “It’s Belinda Hale,” said Jerry, “it’s not Margaret” Belinda Hale hopped out of the car with a bundle of clothing clasped against her breast. She was of medium height, very blond, and what Evelyn called “well- developed.” She was lively, garrulous, and very pretty. No one had ever seen Belinda depressed, though sometimes she was angry, frustrated, or petulant.

  Belinda was the daughter of the sheriff in Babylon, Ted Hale. Belinda's mother had run off with an FBI agent a couple of years after Jim and JoAnn Larkin had been swallowed by the Styx. Belinda Hale loved her father, but not as much as he loved her.

  “Ohhh!” she squealed, as she hurried up to the front steps. “Hey, Jerry, Hey, Miz Larkin! How ya’ll doing? How’d the berries gone be this year?”

  “Hey, Belinda,” said Evelyn, “how’re you?”

  “Berries gone be fine this year,” said Jerry modestly. “We’re gone send you and your daddy a couple of pints just as soon as we start the picking next week.”

  “Well, I'm looking forward, I just cain’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that,” cried Belinda. She smiled lusciously at Jerry, and then moved her gaze upward to Evelyn. “Miz Larkin, I brought you some things to do up for me. I found ’em in the back of my closet, about to put out shoots, Lord knows how long they were lying there, probably since two years and fifteen pounds ago, because they have ever’ one of ’em got to be let out. I tell you, I am getting huge.” She smiled at Jerry again, and patted her flat taut belly.

  “That’s fine, Belinda,” said Evelyn kindly, “you got ’em marked where you want ’em?”

  “I sure do. There’s three skirts, and four blouses, and I was just wondering if you could change the emblem on my blazer.” She mounted the steps so close to Jerry that her skirts brushed his cheek, and handed the clothing to Evelyn. She held up the black blazer for their inspection. “I don’t suppose you would have heard it, because it only happened this very afternoon at three o’clock, and I am not gone really celebrate until tomorrow night, but I just got elected co-captain of the cheerleaders for this coming school year, which is a real honor since I am still only a junior.”

  “Well, well. Congratulations, Belinda, that’s real fine. I know your daddy will be real proud of you.”

  “My daddy,” laughed Belinda, has put out an allpoints bulletin...”

  A little belatedly, Jerry echoed his grandmother’s congratulations: “That’s real good, Belinda...”

  Belinda turned, and flashed a brief sweet smile at the top of Jerry’s head.

  “But the thing is,” Belinda continued, “I get a special emblem because I’m the co-captain, it’s twice as big as the one I have on now, and I want you to replace it for me, I put the new one here in the inside pocket, okay, Miz Larkin... ?”

  “I’d be proud to do it, Belinda,” Evelyn replied. “Won’t you sit for a piece, Belinda? Jerry and I were just waiting for Margaret to get back from Babylon. She’s on her wheel. You didn’t pass her on the way, did you?”

  “I didn’t see anybody, Miz Larkin, not a soul ’cept Mr. Geiger, down under the bridge, fishing, as usual. I don’t know how he keeps his business going. He ought to open a branch down under the bridge, ’cause he’s there more than he’s at his place in town.” Ed Geiger ran a small sporting goods store between the police station and the barbershop.

  Belinda had seated herself in a chair on the other side of the front door from Evelyn. She rocked in it with a quick steady rhythm, as if to show how energetically pleased she was to be there. “But he was just packing up when I came over the bridge. Does he catch much down there? Sometimes he brings fish to Daddy, and Daddy brings ’em home to me, I just throw ’em out, ’cause I hate to clean fish, and Daddy don’t eat ’em anyway. I don’t mind the scales, but I hate cutting off the heads. They stare at you. D’you ever notice how fish stare at you when you’re cutting their heads off? And then your fingers stink to high heaven for the next eight days, like the fish were paying you back for doing it to ’em.”

  Evelyn didn’t like to talk about fishing in the Styx, and so said nothing.

  “Ed Geiger’s down there a lot,” said Jerry politely, ‘seems like every time I drive over the bridge, he’s down there under it,”

  “Well,” said Belinda, “I got to go.” She stood. The chair continued to rock noisily.

  “Don’t run off,” said Evelyn. “Wait till Margaret gets back, Margaret’ll be sick at the heart if she comes back and we tell her that she missed you.”

  Margaret Larkin and Belinda Hale were not close. Belinda was two years older than Margaret, and Belinda’s ebullience made her seem older still, while Margaret’s reticence made her appear even younger than she was, There were two recognized social circles among Babylon’s adolescents; Belinda Hale sat triumphantly at the top of the better, and Margaret Larkin languished somewhere about the middle of the other.

  “Miz Larkin, I’d give anything in the world to be able to sit here and gossip with you and Jerry until the sun went down and we couldn’t see each other in the face any more, but I got to get back to Babylon, and go fix Mr. Redfield’s dinner.”

  Belinda, said Evelyn. “I didn’t know you were taking care of him like that.” James Redfield was the richest man in Babylon, owner of the Citizens, Planters and Merchants Bank (usually referred to as the CP&M). He had been bedridden, however, since a serious automobile accident eighteen months back. “How is Mr. Redfield's neck these days?”

  “Not so good,” said Belinda gravely. “Miz Larkin, if you was to stick a loaded shotgun to his back, he couldn’t
turn his head enough to know it was you that was doing it.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Jerry.

  “It is, it really is,” said Belinda solemnly. Then she brightened: “But these days, it seems like I spend more time over there than I do at home. And Daddy doesn’t like it one little bit. Of course, if Daddy had his way he’d cut off my arms and legs and strap me to his holster, and I couldn’t never leave him then. But there’s laws against cutting off people’s arms and legs, or at least I tell him there are, so he won’t be tempted to do it…”

  “Your daddy loves you,” said Evelyn indulgently. “He loves you like I love Margaret and Jerry.”

  “You be good to your grandmama,” said Belinda to Jerry sternly, then laughed gaily. “Anyway, Mr. Redfield likes to have me around, and it all works out perfect, ’cause as you know I am planning to be a practical nurse, and I have already got the catalogs of every nursing school between New Orleans and Atlanta, even though I won’t be going off for another two years like. But I am getting in a lot of practice on Mr. Redfield. He pays me too, so I am saving my money to go to school on. I don’t want to be a drain on my daddy. And since I’m cooking for Mr. Redfield, I’m learning all about that too. Daddy won’t eat nothing but steak and French fries.”

  “Is Mr. Redfield picky?” asked Evelyn, solicitously.

  “He isn’t,” said Belinda confidingly, “but them two boys of his, I don’t know about them. Seems like they won’t eat anything. They eat like they was three years old, both of ’em, not like they were grown men. I don’t put up with ’em either. I fix supper for Mr. Redfield most nights, and I fix enough for Ben and Mr. Nathan too, and I don’t hang around to see if they eat it or not. I leave it on the table, and if they want it, they eat it. And then they got Nina coming in every morning to clean, and she takes care of Mr. Redfield during the day, and cleans up the dishes and like that, so I don’t really know if they eat it or not. You’d think a thirty-three-year-old man like Nathan Redfield would eat a little dish of white peas that was picked that very afternoon, wouldn’t you? But he won’t, and neither will Ben—”