whole business turned over nice and easy like it was the most natural thing in this world for that tractor to fold over in that drainage ditch. We all ran down there but it wasn’t a thing we could do, but I can still feel my arms ache for how hard I pulled at that tractor. Somebody pulled me away and told me, he said, “Only somebody mightier than us all could lift it,” meaning God, and I felt like screaming right out in that field, “Is this how Youtreat the ones that love You?” My daddy might’ve been a sonofabitch sometimes, but he did evermore love the Lord.
But Lonnie didn’t make things square and here I sit, old as the hills I farmed since I could hold a plow line, sitting here by myself, too. Land and children, they’re the only things in this world that’ll carry on for you, and here I am, going to my grave without either one.
8•
I ’ve heard television evangelists say the Lord will return when you least expect him. I think I was afraid that same prophesy might’ve applied to John Woodrow those nights he didn’t come home. I said to myself. About the time I get used to him being gone, when I’ve calmed down, returned the pistol, that’ll be when he comes in, slobbering all over me, wanting to kiss and make up. Or either that’ll be when the screen door blows open like almighty hell breaking loose and he’ll come in pulling that dazed young girl behind him. And if and when push came to shove I saw myself pulling that pistol from under my pillow and saying, “So what do you think about little Miss Vanderbilt now?”
I remember I slept with my clothes on the three nights he was missing, and each morning before I went to theHoovers I’d change and take a little spit-bath, the kind mama would’ve only allowed if I was sick. It took me right many mornings of those baths to get past feeling guilty, like mama was standing in the door looking at me, holding a towel and some lavender soap, pointing the way to the tub. I can’t remember exactly when it was but I can remember looking at my face in John Woodrow’s old cracked up shaving mirror and saying out loud, “I’m doing the best I can.” Lord, we will tell ourselves anything to get by. The best I could’ve done would’ve been to slip away while John Woodrow had slipped away, but planning, thinking about going home and facing mama and daddy became something I could only bear to think about right before I fell asleep at night, when your judgment’s not good, that in-between time when you can make anything work as you’d please.
That third day I went to work was the day I met Jack. I was waiting under the big tree in the backyard, waiting for somebody, either Tiny Fran or her mother, to come out and tell me to come on in, you didn’t dare just go up and knock on the door, be it front door or back door, and I saw a skinny man with his dungarees all hung down around his hips, swerving, trying to manage a tall load of manure, headed across the yard towards me.
He was forty then, but he looked ten years older. All that time out in the sun had dried and pulled his skin. He sayshe’s never minded it, that he’s not what he calls a town man, trying to stay young and fresh despite the odds. He’s always said it’s fine for women to trick time with lotions and what-not because a trick pulled off just right, he says, is really something to look at, smell of, touch. I know he’s referring to me. I know I’m every bit of his experience.
But he pushed his wheelbarrow right up to me that day like approaching young women waiting under pecan trees was something he did every day, like it was something he regularly did on the way from the chicken house to the garden. I wasn’t afraid at all by the way he looked at me, not like the way I felt when I’d stand up from picking and see the crew chief staring. Jack’s look was more like what happens when I’m walking from here to the store and the sun catches something on the side of the road just
But Lonnie didn’t make things square and here I sit, old as the hills I farmed since I could hold a plow line, sitting here by myself, too. Land and children, they’re the only things in this world that’ll carry on for you, and here I am, going to my grave without either one.
8•
I ’ve heard television evangelists say the Lord will return when you least expect him. I think I was afraid that same prophesy might’ve applied to John Woodrow those nights he didn’t come home. I said to myself. About the time I get used to him being gone, when I’ve calmed down, returned the pistol, that’ll be when he comes in, slobbering all over me, wanting to kiss and make up. Or either that’ll be when the screen door blows open like almighty hell breaking loose and he’ll come in pulling that dazed young girl behind him. And if and when push came to shove I saw myself pulling that pistol from under my pillow and saying, “So what do you think about little Miss Vanderbilt now?”
I remember I slept with my clothes on the three nights he was missing, and each morning before I went to theHoovers I’d change and take a little spit-bath, the kind mama would’ve only allowed if I was sick. It took me right many mornings of those baths to get past feeling guilty, like mama was standing in the door looking at me, holding a towel and some lavender soap, pointing the way to the tub. I can’t remember exactly when it was but I can remember looking at my face in John Woodrow’s old cracked up shaving mirror and saying out loud, “I’m doing the best I can.” Lord, we will tell ourselves anything to get by. The best I could’ve done would’ve been to slip away while John Woodrow had slipped away, but planning, thinking about going home and facing mama and daddy became something I could only bear to think about right before I fell asleep at night, when your judgment’s not good, that in-between time when you can make anything work as you’d please.
That third day I went to work was the day I met Jack. I was waiting under the big tree in the backyard, waiting for somebody, either Tiny Fran or her mother, to come out and tell me to come on in, you didn’t dare just go up and knock on the door, be it front door or back door, and I saw a skinny man with his dungarees all hung down around his hips, swerving, trying to manage a tall load of manure, headed across the yard towards me.
He was forty then, but he looked ten years older. All that time out in the sun had dried and pulled his skin. He sayshe’s never minded it, that he’s not what he calls a town man, trying to stay young and fresh despite the odds. He’s always said it’s fine for women to trick time with lotions and what-not because a trick pulled off just right, he says, is really something to look at, smell of, touch. I know he’s referring to me. I know I’m every bit of his experience.
But he pushed his wheelbarrow right up to me that day like approaching young women waiting under pecan trees was something he did every day, like it was something he regularly did on the way from the chicken house to the garden. I wasn’t afraid at all by the way he looked at me, not like the way I felt when I’d stand up from picking and see the crew chief staring. Jack’s look was more like what happens when I’m walking from here to the store and the sun catches something on the side of the road just
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