The House of Breath (7 page)

“But anyway—one at a time, I'm speakin of Swimma Starnes, now—after this second freak of Swimma's died she jes went straight to the dogs, they say. She got to be jes common trash. Her rich husband divorced her,
then
, after he had ruint her, but still she wouldn't come home.

“Well, and then we heard that she had gone to New Orleens and played around and drunk around and married a little ole jockey. Seen his picture once and he's as drawn up and spiney as Ole Man Nay and looks a hundred years old, bout as big as a banty, but they have to be that little, they say, so as to be light on a racin horse. He had a lotta money, too. Swimma had always said that she was going to find a man with lots a money and get out of this town. She sure did, too.

“And then they discovered oil over round Conroe, the Miracle City. Ole Jimbob Starnes' father had owned some land around there, and who should pop up in Charity one bright day but Miss Swimma Starnes, grinnin out of furs that haltered her like a horsecollar and practically dragged the ground, and on her head a whole bluebird for a hat, tail (as long as you know what) and all. Her wicked life had clawed deep lines all over her face as though she had been fightin wilecats and her eyes were swollen and sick lookin. Because of arthritis (from liquor poisonin, we heard) she dragged one leg a little, but you couldn't hardly notice it if you didn't look for it. She smelled oil, that Swimma, all the way over in New Orleens she smelled it. She was all sugar and cream, bringin as a present a seashell that had written on it
PLAYGROUND OF THE WORLD
—thas all she brought, ceptin herself; and pore ole Lauralee, sick, sweepin the floors before her—until Swimma found out that the Starnes hadn't paid taxes on that land for years—now how
could
they?
we
knew that—and
then
you shoulda heard the Princess Swimma.

“‘You ole fogies here in Charity don't know what the world's like beyond the riverbottoms, sit here and shrivel up and blow away in the wind; and when you get a chance to make a little money and rise above all this and get some security and a little ease you let it slip through your fingers like sawdust, letting everything rot and go to pot and seed, I'm ashamed of all of you, haven't got any more sense than a stick of stovewood, you make me tarred.'

“All of this in some accent, New York or Loosiana or Florida accent, I don't know, I cain't do it right, but not like Charity talks. Oh she was a devil.

“Well, she went back to New Orleens-that little ole banty come drivin up for her in a black sedan of some kind longer'n the Katy Locomotive and they went off ballin the jack in a cloud of black Charity dust. Pore ole Lauralee.

“Know where she is now? Back in Texis far's Borger, that clost but no farther (that little banty jockey jes flew away, don't know where or why, guess the last racin-horse Swimma saw him on jes kept going). Runs a boardin house (and a little of everthing
else
) for oilmen, hope she's satisfied, somebody that saw her said she'll hear a dirty joke from any roughneck that comes in and sets down with one to tell, laughin loud and slap-pin her thigh and talkin about
anything
. Has a diamon ring big as a hensegg and a wart on her nose (and I'm glad) which she says is a beautyspot…. Lauralee still said till she died, pore ole thing, that Swimma'd come back home to Charity, but she didn't. But this's not all…

“When they buried Christy Ganchion, who should crop up for the funeral but Miss Perfecto. (You know they had the services in the old house, not in the church, and the casket was so big (he was a big man) they had to putt it through the winda under the chinaberry tree. They putt him in's old room, kept him there for three days with always a light on; and walkin down the road past the house you could see through the chinaberry leaves and through the winda Christy lyin there in iz box in iz room quiet as ever.) Only the young ones was left, Starnes and Ganchion—Maidie (she was there with her two boys, grown men) and Berryben (not there, still away somewhere) and Swimma. Hattie Clegg come in from Houston, and drawn with her Bell's Palsy, pore ole thing, best Christian in this world, what a life she's had. Swimma seemed the same. Said she was still looking for a good man (she'd run through I don't know how many like a pig eatin acorns). Anyway, turns out that when Granny Ganchion died (
finely
, after livin on and on and sayin, ‘I'll live to be a hunderd just to hound you all'; they had her goiter taken out, said twood bring back her hearin, and some said it did, that that's what killed her, that towards the last she heard Christy, and that when she heard the whine of the planeing mill, dyin, she said, ‘Listen, what's that? I knew it; wherever I go, above or below, there'll be a sawmill.' They'd had to lock the cellardoor after she got so feeble, to keep her from going down to the rootcellar to find something she said was waitin for her to come and get.) she'd left a little money in a fruitjar for Christy. There uz only Christy and Malley left now and Christy left Malley in the house with the Cleggs next door to look after her (they come over one day, to borry something no doubt, and found Malley dead in her chair by the opened shutter. Mice had made nests in the windasill out of the gray hair she'd combed out as she set there day in and day out, and there uz even sparrows' nests in the shutters and dirtdobber hives. Some said she'd opened the shutter to call out to a wagon that uz passin by; and others that she'd seen somebody she knew comin acrost Bailey's Pasture—we'll never know. It's all so sad, the life of this house, and seems like nothing but deaths, but then that's the way anything ends, finally, ain't it? We all have to die…) and went away to Houston, nobody knew what for but seemed like he was lookin for something. Somebody said they saw him wanderin in the streets lookin like a dead man, and passed him by; others said he was sellin newspapers on a corner, and still some more said he'd joined a Mission. Anyway it turns out that
Swimma was in Houston too
and that she come to Christy on the street corner and got money from him often, sayin she uz sick and broke. No
wonder she come to his funeral
, they had this between them. I think
this
death nearly killed her, but you'd never know it, she'd never let on she was hurt by anything, never in her life.

“She jes made a list of all the old dishes after the burial and left. Maidie said she only wanted the churn that Aunty her mother had churned in.

“Something wild and cussed in that girl—but something else, too; cain't put your finger on it. She'll come to a violent end, you watch. We'll all hear of it one day, just wait'n see. It's jes the saddest thing I ever heard tell of.

“Pore ole Lauralee Starnes…”

And then the well-voice dies away and somewhere in the long grownover yard you think you hear Swimma's husky girl's voice, crying as she flung down cousins into statues among the stickerburrs.

VIII

YOU CRY down, “Hattie. Hattie, Hattie Clegg!” and wait; and then you hear a faraway watery voice that rises from deep below to the surface like a bubble, bubbling and warbling, “Ho-o-o-ome-ho-o-o-ome,” and breaks and says like a silvery crying: “Anybody home…?” and echoes “Ho-o-o-ome…” It is the calling voice of Hattie Clegg who lived in the crumbling house beyond this house and used to come so often to see everybody in this house, always calling at the back door “Anybody home…?” before she went off to Houston to work for the S.P.

“Nobody is at home anymore anywhere in the world…” Hattie's voice murmurs; and you want to answer, “Hattie, Hattie, every home in the world is no home for you and me, we are meant to go from home to home and call if they are home (and only strangers break out through some unconsidered door like a bird out of a clock and chime terror) and leave again, for some other door.”

And then Hattie speaks out of the well to you…

“After a bizniss course at Miz Cratty's Select Bizniss College in Palestine, where I learned Gregg Shorthand and comtometer and typin, I came to the city, got this job with the rayroad, been here twenty-five years.

“O my folks! Never shoulda left Charity, I guess, but helped em there, ever paycheck I got, sent a tithe of it home to em, Mama and Papa and Willadean and Gilbert and Thrash.

“Got Willadean through high school, struggled to get her finished only to see her marry a widower from up at Sanderson with three childrun. Something in Charity ruined Willadean, prissed her all up and sent her straight to ruination. It uz that C.C.C. Camp out at Groveton did it; made a wicked girl out of Willadean. Then she worked at the C.O.D. Cafe, met all the wrong kind, the sawmill boys and the roughnecks from the oilfields and the just plain tramps of Charity.

“Willadean O Willadean, I nursed you like my very own when you was little, washed you in winter by the cookstove, wiped off smut from your little hands twenty times a day, washed you and fed you and played with you under the shadetree and swang you in the tireswing, shook down pussimons and called doodlebugs and picked goobers—anything you wanted. Carried you on my hip round the place, day in and day out, till I pulled my side loose, made me slouched like I am today. Can still feel you astride my hip, clingin there like a little warm possum on to me wherever I went. Sometimes you was as heavy as a croakersack of roastinears, but I went on totin you, pullin my very insides out for you.

“Guess I made a mistake in leavin em there in Charity, but it was up to the boys to help make the livin and I had this chanct for this job in the city. What in the world would they have ever done without me? It was always, ‘Hattie Hattie kin you come home to Charity this weekend cause the front porch is fallin in and we got to get it fixed and Papa is drawn double with rheumatism and Mama can't squat even to gather eggs from the henhouse.' Or, ‘Hattie Hattie, come home on the bus soon as you get off on Saturday noon, count of Willadean's in trouble by a drummer that came through Charity sellin Watkins Products.'

“Never had a life of my own, always workin and doin for others, till suddenly I'm an old woman, fifty, and an old maid, kissed once at the Charity Chatauqua by the best-looking man of Charity County but never had time to follow it up, never had time to give to kissin and courtin, had to let him go, Huck Chandler uz his name.

“Remember once I went in the C.O.D. Cafe after Willadean and what did I see but that young priss standin on her tiptoes on some scales that said upon them, ‘Your wate and fate,' and a young roughneck graspin her round the lower waist and both of them gigglin to beat the band. I could see Willadean's fate right there, didn't have to putt no penny in no machine to ask
her
fate. Well, I said to myself, ‘Hattie you're a Christian and like a mother to Willadean, raised her from the cradle, nursed her and washed her and fed her and toted her like your very own, it's up to you to get her home and do some talkin to her.' But I decided to jes set down first without makin any fuss that might let her know I uz there and to jes watch this Miss Willadean. The C.O.D. Cafe was jes full, people at the machines, all at the counter, ever seat at the tables was filled with somebody from the Charity sawmill or the C.C.C. Camp out at Groveton or the oilfields, smokin and drinkin their beer and bottles of whisky under the tables; and the nickelodeon was on the rampage, playin at the moment Ding Dong Bells. Miss Willadean was in her glory, I could see that; prissin in and out like a priss-ike at the tables, switchin here and there, laughin and cuttin up with the rowdies and singin right with the nickelodeon as she waited on them, ‘Ding Dong bells are ringin, but not for me….' I was standin way back in a corner, alone in a corner of the whole world, and my heart breakin to see this Willadean I never knew about.

“After a while I sneaked out and went on home with the dingdong bells ringin in my head.

“Well, when Willadean got off work and came home I took her to task for her actions in the C.O.D. Cafe and we had a family ruckus good and proper, Willadean shoutin, ‘I've got a right to do as I
damned
please. When
you
start tellin
me
what to do, the fat's in the fire. Got me some good men friends here, as good as any you'll find in Houston or anyplace else—
you've
never had any, but
I'm
going to—and right now my special one is Mr. Steve Cavanaugh, who is an oilman with lots of money and a big Packard….'

“And Mama said, ‘Hattie Hattie, Willadean's pretty and popular in the town, not like you was, going to church and Sundayschool and doin all the chores on the place. Why are you so hateful? Times have changed and ways have changed in Charity, and Willadean has to have her some men friends, she's no little girl anymore…'

“That was all the thanks I got.

“Well, when Willadean got married away to the widower from up at Sanderson I never heard from her much anymore. And there was Gilbert to handle, poor crippled Gilbert up and grown and needin to have braces on his legs so he could walk, since he was paralyzed when jest a little boy by the paralysis plague that hit all the childrun of Charity so hard and killed quite a parcel of em back in the woods. Sent Gilbert to doctors in Houston, paid for his braces, by the month, then sent him to a school up north in Illinois to learn watch-making.

“But there was nothing I could do with Thrash, just hung around Mama and sat on the front porch, never would do a lick a work, like a child, cuddlin close to Mama, warm and close in some dream.

“O
Mama and Papa and Willadean and crippled Gilbert and pore old Thrash, ever time I punched the time-clock at the S.P. it 'uz for you
.

“What of my time and life I didn't give to all them in Charity, I give to the Church and the Young People in Houston. What times we had! Wienerroasts and barefooted hikes and hayrides and New Year's Watch Parties. Oh the programs we put on on Sunday nights at Epworth League! The fine speeches made by my boys and girls and the readin out of the Bible verses. The hymns we sang, all of em settin before me, young and bright, Clara Lou Emson, Joe David Barnes, Folner Ganchion, Conchita Bodeen, and all of them, singin loud and joyful ‘He Leadeth Me' and ‘I Will Be True, for There Are Those Who Trust Me' and our very favrite of all, ‘Blest Be The Tie That Binds.' Just for a little while, not long, but just for a wonderful little while, they were all mine, bound to me and bound together, the only thing I ever had, in Fellowship Hall.