The Delta’s Girl

For B

             Barbara Jane Hillis leaned forward and rested her chin on her arms. This gave her a steady view of the endless cotton fields in front of her. She stared across the rows carved into the flat land and bounced a twig held between her teeth up and down several times. Then she removed the stick and turned her head, holding her long auburn hair to one side so it didn’t cover her face. “Well,” she said. “What do you think?”

            David Kearny glanced between his legs to see if the grass was staining his trousers. “About what?” he asked.

            “The Delta. It’s great isn’t it?” She reached into a shirt pocket and produced a barrette that she opened with her teeth. She slipped it into her hair on the side facing David. This exposed her face and with it that expectant freshness he found so unnerving. An ancient cowboy hat covered the top of her head.  She locked her eyes so as to trap him into the truth.

            He shrugged. “It’s okay.”

            “Just okay?”

            “I’ve lived too long by the ocean, I suppose,” he said. “I guess I miss the smell of salt air in the morning.”

            “Makes things rust. That’s what salt air does.” Her eyes bored deeper into him. “This air makes things grow.”

            He shrugged again.

            “Look here,” she said, twirling around so she faced him on all fours. Then she pointed at the ground between his legs.

            He obeyed without thinking and looked at the patch of grass between them. He looked up at her face, lopsided now with one side of her hair nearly touching the ground while the other remained in place, held by the barrette.

            “What’s this, do you think?” she asked, spreading a group of longer blades of grass to reveal a single, frail, green–topped stalk quivering in the spring breeze.

            “I have no idea,” he said.

            “It be Lespedeza,” she said laughing. “Everybody knows that.” She let the grass cover it again. “My granddaddy always said you had to spread Lespedeza seed on the snow for it to put up right in the spring. Bet you can’t do that by the ocean.”

            She turned back to a seated position on the warm ground and looked across the new-plowed field again. He had the impression that she was finished talking for the moment.

            He studied the soft curve of her back contrasted against the long straight furrows. The silence unnerved him so he said, “It’s okay here.” She didn’t respond so he added. “I guess next to the sea, I like the mountains best.”

            She turned and looked at him the way a teacher would look at a student who had failed to solve the easiest problem of the day. “That’s just it,” she announced as if announcing the solution.

            “What’s what?” he said.

            She smiled and the smile completely unmanned him, a trick he had learned to dread.

            “You see, here you have to create your own mountains.”

            He fought for time. “Your own mountains?”

            “Yes,” she said and her eagerness and certitude kept him unbalanced. “That way, you don’t suffer constraint.”

            “Constraint?”

            “Yes, constraint. Your mountains can be as big as you want or as small. They can be covered with snow or even have a giant cherry on top like that one there.” She pointed to a thunderhead on the horizon, topped by a round black cloud that did indeed seem to radiate a red hue in the late afternoon sky.

            He laid his arms across his legs and rested his chin on them the way she had done. They both watched the fields spread out before them like charts drawn to illustrate perspective.

            “How do they plow them so straight?” he asked.

            “They have a marker on an arm of the tractor that they use to measure from the last row plowed,” she said. “Like this land itself―each generation is built upon the values of the last.” She paused and then added, “Daddy’s been doing it so long, though, he really doesn’t need a marker.”

            He looked back at the fields and he felt a breeze that swept him forward for a fraction of a second—not really long enough to register fully— and pulled him into those long rows and he saw the tedium of, year after year, coaxing life from this fecund land. Her voice jerked him back the way a young calf is jerked as he comes to the end of the roper’s lariat.

            “It would be truly sad, wouldn’t it?”

            He focused on her and processed what he thought he heard her say.

            “Sad?” he said.

            “It would be so sad to know that you had actually to be where the mountains were in order to have them. That you couldn’t just do it whenever or wherever you chose.”

            She turned away from him and became quiet again. He knew not to speak, so he stared at the falling sun on the horizon. The bright orb burned his eyes but he neither blinked nor turned away. He continued to look directly into the sun’s fire and, finally, he saw the mountains. His mountains. They soared with a comforting majesty from the delta to heights only possible in one or two spots on the planet. Snows whipped from their peaks and circled the vast jutting rocks. Their pristine beauty broke his heart but he continued to watch them.

            Confident that his mountains would endure, he looked toward the girl. The sun had blinded him, though. He only saw streaks of fire darting like hummingbirds before him.

            “I’m blind,” he said.

            Barbara turned toward him. “No, you can see now,” she said.

            Sure enough, she came into focus. The barrette had fallen from her hair and the long strands hung from both sides and framed her face the way the evening sky had framed the sun. Now her face, always tinged with the ruddiness befitting a farmer’s daughter, glowed as had the sun in the distance, almost raging in its self-assurance—at once both fearsome and motherly. He could see her clearly and also the mountains behind her and the long straight rows between them.

He sat without moving and loved her with a fierceness that mocked the power of the earth itself.

 

The Casserole Brigade

The Casserole Brigade started showing up two days after Dora Mae’s funeral. There were a half-dozen members appearing from the mist of John Paul’s despondency like soldiers emerging in dim shapes from no-man’s land. To them, he appeared numb and vulnerable, no doubt dazed from the damage his loss had caused, so suddenly and unexpectedly had it burst upon him. Easy pickings.

At first, there were evening treats designed to soften him up for later assaults. A plate of spaghetti or a surplus Chicken Tetrazzini from a dinner for a sister. “My late husband used to call it “Chicken Tetrachloride” but then he always had more money than taste, ahem.”

And, of course, there were the casseroles. They came in every form imaginable and some that, quite frankly, John Paul could never have imagined. There were ham and cheese casseroles, egg and cheese casseroles, egg and anything casseroles, and casseroles made, apparently from whatever lay uneaten in a refrigerator at any given moment. Consuelo Remindez, wife of the late manager of “La Casa Ensinada” even once brought him a Chili Relleno casserole that had nearly taken off the top of his head. His vote for most bizarre was though, for a considerable length of time, a broccoli and corn bread casserole that Emily Kesterson had left at his door one evening with a note that said simply, “We must each find a way to get over our grief.”

She was always the shy one.

She would come late, and on the few times she knocked on his door, she knocked softly, so softly he could scarcely discern it from the noise of the city.

“I’m sorry.” That’s the way she always began.

The others weren’t as subtle. Marcella Goodwin, for example, would catch him in the lobby waiting for the elevator. “Gonna bring you a brand new dish tonight,” she would announce in a voice audible to anyone near. “That’ll be two, counting me, har har.”

Folks felt good about it. John Paul and Dora Mae never did seem that they could afford to live in the building. He must be suffering both emotionally and financially, it was surmised. A little help from the ladies here and there must have been welcome. Everyone commented on how well John Paul seemed to be doing. Besides, he enjoyed the casseroles and welcomed them, most of them at least. As long as he smiled and dined, they kept coming like products on an assembly line.

It went on like this for some time. When those at the morning coffee gathering tried to remember later, reminisces ranged from a month to three months. At any rate, it was long enough for Parker Thompson to start a pool. He called it the “Land John Paul Pool” and it is whispered that he had collected nearly a hundred dollars before the news hit the condo like a tsunami.

One day he just wasn’t there anymore.

“Not here?” Someone asked. “You mean he went on a trip?”

“No,” a daughter explained. “He and a friend moved to New York.”

“You mean he had a girl friend?” Marcella said. “Whose casserole won?”

“No, it was his friend Fred.”

“Fred?”

“Yes, they have leased a place in Manhattan.” Complete silence settled on the room. From that day, no one ever mentioned his name again.

 A Bag of Marshmallows

            This is hardly a southern morality tale. It has no nubile farmer’s daughter. It has no beloved dog. It has no eccentric relative. It doesn’t mention a snake. Even once. But it hosts the seven deadly sins, all of them: envy, gluttony, pride, lust, greed, sloth, and even anger. The original sinful attraction, in this case, was the unassuming marshmallow. Gather round.

            I once loved marshmallow like the Galilean loves a sinner. Because of them, I

-          Silently cursed those kids who could afford a ten-cent bag while I was stuck with nickel one,

-          Ate more than my share at any opportunity,

-          Boasted that I could eat more of them than any kid at Lakeside Elementary,

-          Dreamed of immersing myself in a soft, yielding, embracing pile of them,

-          Stole one or more of them at ever opportunity, and

-          Once pushed my little brother to the ground because he wouldn’t give me one of his after I had devoured all of mine.

This gave rise to my great plot and subsequent adventure. I was eight years old, a fact that placed me at school all day without the attendant good sense to control my impulses. These were more innocent and peaceful times, so when a kid reached the third grade and was sentenced to schooling for an entire day, the taking of lunch presented a veritable plethora of choices.

            One could bring lunch in a brown paper bag and enjoy it with others in a designated lunchroom, a choice generally reserved for the poor and the untrustworthy. One could take a quarter and walk four blocks north to the Pine Bluff High School campus and dine there at the cafeteria. One could walk the same distance due west on 15^th Street until one reached a diner called “The Little Chef” and have a hamburger or chili dog with drink for the same amount. One could walk one block farther and dine at a corner drug store lunch bar, expensive but classy, a burger with water.

            The rich kids, most of whom lived within walking distance dined at home. They included some of the prettiest girls in town.

            Being an adventurous sort, and when I wasn’t on probation and sentenced to the lunchroom with a bologna sandwich, I opted for the western sites. I think it was because I silently dreamed that someday, when I had been particularly mistreated, I would just continue walking until I reached California where I would become a rich movie star. More likely it was because if I skipped a drink with a meal, I could purchase a five-cent bag of marshmallows at the drug store.

            Neither drugs for the dope fiend or solitude for the poet had a greater pull on one than the thought of a bag of marshmallows for desert.

            Therein sprang the plot.

            You see, they didn’t just sell nickel bags at the drug store. They sold ten-cent bags and these were tempting. But the piece de resistance, the Treasure of South Cherry Street, the Holy of Holies, was a 25-cent bag of marshmallows the size of a small pillow. They hung from clips on tall display stand like talisman on a totem pole. By the time I began concocting my plan, the image of those bags had invaded my mind until I thought of little else but the day I would buy one and devour its entire contents.

            But how? I only received a quarter a day for lunch, tightly tied with a knot in a lady’s handkerchief and placed in my left pocket each morning by my mother, one who knew too well that to advance a boy of my age funds for more than a day’s food was to telegraph an open invitation to Satan to make room for another soul.

            No, I would have to operate within the perimeters set for me. I had to skip the normal meal. It was that simple. Besides, a meal of marshmallows had to be at least as healthy, probably more so, than a chili dog. Tastier too. Yeah, that was it, a good plan backed by sound reasoning.

            One late autumn day found me walking west along 15^th Street with a jaunty air as if the world existed solely for my pleasure. My left hand clutched a quarter. (I always untied it while I was walking to lunch to avoid teasing.) As I passed the diner, I could feel the eyes upon me for I hardly ever opted for the drug store. I whistled and concentrated on a repair shop across the street. I turned casually south on Cherry and slid into the drug store sideways. Phase One was successful.

Once inside, I relaxed. Assuming a practiced nonchalance, I eased to the candy area and took what seemed like an hour, but could only have been a few seconds, to peruse the candy offerings as if I had the prerogatives of a Rockefeller.

Quite without warning, synapses tuned by billions of years of evolution registered a danger warning. An adult appeared, staring down upon me as if I were the least of creatures crawling upon the earth. “May I help you?” it said.

“Just want some marshmallows,” I said. “I have money.” I retrieved the largest prize on the totem pole. I stood without moving, feeling its weight against my chest, and waiting for the apparition to disappear.

“Having a party at school?” it said.

Now I was in a jam. Lying, my mother had warned me more than once, was a terrible sin, one of the worst. She petrified me by telling about its deadly consequences and those of similar vile habits. A liar who allowed the allurements of sin to rule his actions was destined for a cruel fate, even blindness, or a partial state thereof. I pondered. I felt sweat forming on my brow. The potential consequences of my actions swirled about me like debris around a funnel cloud. My heart began to pump furiously at the thought of continuing this sinful escapade: regrets, nightmares, pimples, full or partial blindness…

The spectacles upon the bridge of my nose bear mute testimony to my next act.

“Yessir,” I said. “I’m supposed to bring the marshmallows.”

Surprised that I could still see, I stood patiently while it patted my head and moved to help another customer. I paid my quarter like a gambler paying his debt, executed an “about face” and left the drug store, Phase Two completed.

            I felt that a young dandy walking down Cherry Street snacking on a knee-high bag of marshmallows must have been a remarkable sight, even in a city as large as Pine Bluff. I assumed a swagger as I slowly tasted the first fat victim from the bag. I allowed the flavor to roam my mouth like a frightened pony circling a corral. The process took an entire block.

            On the next block, I crammed pair after pair into my mouth at once, just for the fun of it. As I chewed, I turned back to the east, deciding to flaunt my wealth by returning through one of the richest neighborhoods in town.

            Four more victims, now I was the Cyclops tasting the crew of Ulysses. I let out a soft roar and devoured another pair. I continued east, passing the homes of any number of pretty girls who must have been watching from their lunch with amazement. When I finished the crew of the Homeric galley, I slowly devoured the captain, grinning all the while.

            Then I released my inner gymnast and began pitching the soft white balls into the air and catching them in my mouth. Another block passed in this manner. I missed the fifth and it rolled into the gutter by the sidewalk. I didn’t bother to pick it up, for I had plenty. Besides, I was beginning to feel a little odd.

            Lest what follows strike the reader only as burlesque, allow me to produce empirical statistics that should be recorded in some vast reservoir of knowledge somewhere on the planet to serve as an object lesson to the logic-challenged.

            Statistic One: The difference between wanting another marshmallow and beginning to think you have had all you want is approximately four additional marshmallows.

            Statistic Two: The difference between thinking you have had all the marshmallows you want and not really wishing to eat anymore is approximately three additional marshmallows.

            Statistic Three: The difference between not really wishing to eat any more marshmallows and vomiting a white stream of projectile foam into a fence in an alley behind a house is two additional marshmallows.

            Statistic Four: The length of time an eight-year old boy must sit with his head in his hand lurching with drive heaves from eating too many marshmallows is somewhere between ten and 15 minutes.

            No cars came through the alley as I suffered alone. The only thing that passed in front of me was my life, and my regrets. I hadn’t apologized to my sister for stealing her scrapbook. I hadn’t looked after my little brother properly. (There was this matter of the “dirt sandwich.”) I hadn’t asked Nell Phillips to be my girlfriend. Hell, I hadn’t even made out a will.

            When I had quit retching, I folded top of the bag of marshmallows—it still appeared, somehow, to be full—and slowly gained my feet. I used alleys to escape the prying eyes of the fancy homes and found my way at last back to 15^th street where I placed the remainder of the bag of marshmallows in the hollow of a tree, although I knew I wouldn’t return for them. Back at school, I avoided classmates as I eased into the classroom and began the worst afternoon of my life.

            This was more than 60 years ago and I have never willingly eaten a marshmallow since. In fact, I become nauseated to this day at the very thought of one. While contemplating this account of the incident recently, I happened to be in my hometown and with my business in the city completed, I drove the route from the old elementary school, now closed and boarded after yielding to one of those mega-campuses wherein they incarcerate students for eight hours a day to prevent episodes such as mine. I also drove around the corner where the drugstore once stood.

            The neighborhood is no longer affluent. Nell Phillip’s home has disappeared, all that remains is a slab that looks too small for a real house. Cheap “For Rent” signs struck the cadence as I drove along. Parked cars had destroyed all the lawns. I slowed when I came to the corner where once stood the tree in which I had stored the remnants of my unholy adventure. All that remained was a withered stump, the remainder having fallen, as have so many of our dreams, to age and reality.

 

The Prayer List

             Horace Lundsford was doing just fine until Gracie Rodgers reported his name on a prayer list. Shortly thereafter, things fell apart. The unfortunate thing was that he didn’t even know he was on it until the calls started. Prayer lists originate in church on Sunday morning and Horace didn’t spend Sunday mornings in church although his wife, Sarah, did. That had everything to do with it, he would understand much later.

            The first to call, while he was finishing a breakfast that he had cooked for himself, was the oldest Thorton girl, the nosey one. Well they were both nosey but this one had elevated it into an art form.

            “It’s Carlota,” she said though it wasn’t necessary. She had this snorting sound that she made when she breathed. To him, when she really got excited, it sounded like a pig trying to read scriptures. He would have recognized that voice anywhere. It was one of the many reasons he didn’t attend church.

            “Sarah’s not home,” he said, hoping to head off even a short conversation.

            “It’s you I wanted,” she said. “I called to talk to you.”

            Horace remained perfectly quiet, the way a child who has broken something will, hoping in that instant that the disastrous thing didn’t happen, but knowing against that hope, that it did.

            “Did you hear me?” she said.

            “Sure I heard you. What’s up?” His mind inventoried his collection of tools, believing that must be why she called: to borrow something. He began to weed out the most precious of them, the ones he wouldn’t part with, from the ones he might let her use.

            “You tell me,” she said. Just like that, “You tell me.”

            What the hell was that supposed to mean?

            “Tell you what?”

            “Why I need to pray for you.”

            “I don’t need you to pray for me.”

            “Then why, tell me, is your name on a prayer list, big as the state capitol building, right there in the Armistead County Informer?”

            “The what?”

            “The paper. Gracie Rodgers put in the Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church news that you are on the prayer list,” she drew a breath and snorted. “And I need to know what kind of troubles you got.”

            “I don’t have any troubles.”

            “You got to have troubles or your name wouldn’t be on the prayer list.”

            “I’m tellin’ you I ain’t got no troubles and you can keep your prayers to yourself.”

            But, like a tree planted by the waters, she stood firm. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

            “A what?” He could see his face in the large hall mirror and it was growing red like there was a fire lit somewhere deep within it—a volcanic fire that rested directly on top of an explosion.

            “Are you and Sarah having trouble?” She snorted again and sounded proud of her own nerve.

            “What?”

            “Trouble. Are you two having, you know, marital problems?”

            “Goddamn it, who told you that?”

            “If you are going to blaspheme the Savior, I shall refuse to pray for you.” Snort.

            “Well don’t then!” He crashed the phone’s receiver into its cradle so hard that a piece of plastic detached and shot from it.

            “Sarah!” he yelled, then remembered that she was visiting her mother in Dallas County.

            Before he could think, the phone rang again. It was Ida Covington.

            “Is it cancer, Horace?”

            “Is what cancer?” he said. Then he remembered.

            “My cousin had it and he didn’t live but six months. And he had two churches praying for him.”

            “Your cousin?”

            “Uncle Fred’s oldest son, Chester. But Horace, it was the most wonderful thing. He surrendered his soul to Jesus just before he died and he’s in heaven right now. Not a doubt in my mind but what he is praying for you.”

“Jesus,” Horace said aloud.

“Yes, Jesus. Oh Horace, if you coulda just seen that smile on his face layin’ there in that coffin. Why you…”

            “Ida,” he said and he said it loud so she would pay attention.

            “Yes Horace.”

            “Get off this damn telephone,” and he slammed the receiver again and another piece of plastic flew away and bounced across the floor. He looked at his hand. It was shaking. As soon as the fact settled upon him, the phone rang again.

            “Shit,” he said. Then “Hello.”

            “Horace, if you need money…” It was his brother.

            “I don’t need any money,” he said, this time quietly, like he was expecting the call.

            “Don’t let foolish pride keep you from seeking help from those who love you,” his brother said.

            “I don’t need money,” he said. “But I’m touched that you offered.”

            “Oh, I couldn’t help you,” his brother said. “No, no, not at all. I just wanted to remind you of what the scriptures say: ‘Pride goeth before the fall.’ Don’t be prideful, Horace.”

            He placed the receiver gently in its cradle this time. Before he could leave the room, three more people called. Mostly, they were just nosing around, except for a nephew asking what would become of his tools if something dreadful happened to him. Pressure mounted in this head. Each call added to it as if someone was pumping air into his brain.

He reached for his coat and was going to go outside, away from the kitchen and the phone.

It beat him, though. The ring caught him just as he reached the door. He turned and stared at it, hoping it would stop. It rang louder.

            “It’ll just follow me outside,” he said to himself. He flung the coat across a chair so hard that it knocked the chair over and it slid into the kitchen cabinets. He snatched the receiver from the cradle and yelled a hello into it. It was Gracie Rodgers. She started to say something, but he cut her off. The whole stupid, ridiculous, malevolent monster of a morning erupted deep within him.

            “Gracie, tell me one thing,” he said calmly but with the force of far away thunder.

            “What’s that, Horace?”

            “Why, tell me why, in goddamn hell is my name on a moth… on a…,” he was having  difficulty breathing now, but he managed to yell, “On a stinking prayer list?”

            “Well Horace, if you must know, and I wish you could ask it a little nicer, Sarah said you have a problem with your temper.”