I said, Fine, I’m ignorant of the fix he’s in.
I knew if he was able to speak he was cursing me to anybody who’d listen, cursing that daddy’s girl he’d married and thinks she’s too good to come help the man who took her away from all that and tried to make a hard-working, honest-to-God, common, everyday woman out of her, “Put some meat on them bones!” My ears rang for hearing him say that. And all I could’ve said back to him was, “That’s exactly what happened, nail on the head. Bleed, John Woodrow, bleed.”
Word of his injury soon travelled up one tobacco row and down the next, and by the time the workers came up into the yard that afternoon it seemed like every one of them knew exactly how many stitches he’d had, how deep the cuts were, and how his lung was punctured in such-and-such a place. Walking to the house after work, a woman who’d never spoken to me before came up and patted my arm and said, “I hear your man got cut realbad, might not make it.” She waited for me to touch her back or maybe break down, but I didn’t. I was so ticked off all I could say to her was, “That’s what they tell me.” She snapped her hand off me and told me it seemed like a woman would stand by her man, irregardless, and it seemed like that woman would be especially true after something like this, irregardless. I guess she meant regardless of the fact that he was a known bastard. But she broke stride with me and fell in with her friends, and I could hear her tell them how insensitive I was and with John Woodrow “laid up in the hospital, cut up and about to hardly make it.” Then one of the women said that was a shame, and she proceeded to tell them about how her sister nursed her husband after a bad wreck last year. She said the man’s face was sliced this way and that and his wife stayed right by him, feeding him through a straw, picking glass slivers from his lips. The woman told the story like it was a privilege for the man’s wife to pick at his lips. And I know they also thought I’d be doing the wifely thing to sit by John Woodrow and swab his wounds just because, all because he was my man. I’d nurse Jack all day and all night, but that’s a different story.
And while they walked on I slipped back and crossed a wide ditch and stood on the edge of the wheat field, wondering if I should wade across to Jack’s house. But I didn’t go. I just stayed on the edge there and looked at his house,this house. I had no idea it’d be my house five months from then. And after a long time of purely standing and staring, wondering about my whole big mess, I crossed back over the ditch and went home. When I got there I found the pistol and put it at the bottom of my bag, way down under where my lingerie had been. I’d never see those nice things again, but I still hear the pistol.
That night after I’d eaten supper Jack came to see me. I remember him standing at the screen door, and I could smell him. He smelled like soap, a sweet soap. And he said, “I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but your husband passed a little while ago.” He paused a minute, and then he said, “It was the lungs. They wouldn’t stay up is what Lonnie told me.” And the very next thought I had was how I was alone, not John Woodrow’s dead, ding-dong John Woodrow’s dead. I was glad to have Jack stay there with me while I cried everything out of my system.
Sometimes I think the smart thing to have done then would’ve been to pack right up and go home, fast as I could, call daddy and have him come for me. But I couldn’t. I hadn’t just stayed out all night and was nervous about walking into breakfast. This wasn’t anything like that, like knowing that everything would blow over by lunch and by dinnertime you’d be one of them again, forgiven, everything back in its place, including you. Where was my place there? I wasn’t a son, not a boy who couldcome home and fall into plowing or mowing a field and earn his
I knew if he was able to speak he was cursing me to anybody who’d listen, cursing that daddy’s girl he’d married and thinks she’s too good to come help the man who took her away from all that and tried to make a hard-working, honest-to-God, common, everyday woman out of her, “Put some meat on them bones!” My ears rang for hearing him say that. And all I could’ve said back to him was, “That’s exactly what happened, nail on the head. Bleed, John Woodrow, bleed.”
Word of his injury soon travelled up one tobacco row and down the next, and by the time the workers came up into the yard that afternoon it seemed like every one of them knew exactly how many stitches he’d had, how deep the cuts were, and how his lung was punctured in such-and-such a place. Walking to the house after work, a woman who’d never spoken to me before came up and patted my arm and said, “I hear your man got cut realbad, might not make it.” She waited for me to touch her back or maybe break down, but I didn’t. I was so ticked off all I could say to her was, “That’s what they tell me.” She snapped her hand off me and told me it seemed like a woman would stand by her man, irregardless, and it seemed like that woman would be especially true after something like this, irregardless. I guess she meant regardless of the fact that he was a known bastard. But she broke stride with me and fell in with her friends, and I could hear her tell them how insensitive I was and with John Woodrow “laid up in the hospital, cut up and about to hardly make it.” Then one of the women said that was a shame, and she proceeded to tell them about how her sister nursed her husband after a bad wreck last year. She said the man’s face was sliced this way and that and his wife stayed right by him, feeding him through a straw, picking glass slivers from his lips. The woman told the story like it was a privilege for the man’s wife to pick at his lips. And I know they also thought I’d be doing the wifely thing to sit by John Woodrow and swab his wounds just because, all because he was my man. I’d nurse Jack all day and all night, but that’s a different story.
And while they walked on I slipped back and crossed a wide ditch and stood on the edge of the wheat field, wondering if I should wade across to Jack’s house. But I didn’t go. I just stayed on the edge there and looked at his house,this house. I had no idea it’d be my house five months from then. And after a long time of purely standing and staring, wondering about my whole big mess, I crossed back over the ditch and went home. When I got there I found the pistol and put it at the bottom of my bag, way down under where my lingerie had been. I’d never see those nice things again, but I still hear the pistol.
That night after I’d eaten supper Jack came to see me. I remember him standing at the screen door, and I could smell him. He smelled like soap, a sweet soap. And he said, “I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but your husband passed a little while ago.” He paused a minute, and then he said, “It was the lungs. They wouldn’t stay up is what Lonnie told me.” And the very next thought I had was how I was alone, not John Woodrow’s dead, ding-dong John Woodrow’s dead. I was glad to have Jack stay there with me while I cried everything out of my system.
Sometimes I think the smart thing to have done then would’ve been to pack right up and go home, fast as I could, call daddy and have him come for me. But I couldn’t. I hadn’t just stayed out all night and was nervous about walking into breakfast. This wasn’t anything like that, like knowing that everything would blow over by lunch and by dinnertime you’d be one of them again, forgiven, everything back in its place, including you. Where was my place there? I wasn’t a son, not a boy who couldcome home and fall into plowing or mowing a field and earn his
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