The Late Child (59 page)

“Momma, suckers are bad for his teeth and sugar isn't too good for him, anyway,” Harmony pointed out.

“Well, why won't he sit in my lap when I ask him to?” Ethel asked. “A boy that age ought to want to sit in his grandmother's lap.”

“He just met you yesterday, Mom,” Harmony reminded her. Her mother's dark views of every aspect of life made her want to be somewhere else. Even telling Dick that Neddie was leaving might be more upbeat.

“You ought to be married, Harmony,” Ethel said. “Both my other daughters are married and you ought to be married too.”

“Pat isn't married, Pat's divorced,” Harmony pointed out.

“If she ain't married right this minute it's a temporary thing, why bring it up?” Ethel asked.

“Billy isn't married,” Harmony said—she was annoyed at being singled out for criticism again. It seemed to her that her mother had started singling her out as soon as she had begun to develop and had to get a little bra. She had had to wear a bra before Neddie had to, although Neddie was two years older. At one point her mother had even accused her of taking pills to make her breasts grow.

“Thank God Billy escaped,” Ethel said. “Billy don't need to be married—no better judge of women than he is, it would just be a big mistake. He'd get some old gal who couldn't cook half as well as I can, and who wouldn't keep his clothes as clean as I can, either. It'd be someone who wouldn't even nag him about smoking too many cigarettes.”

“Mom, he might get someone who would be sweet to him and who would make him feel loved enough that he wouldn't need to make obscene phone calls to his high school girlfriend,” Harmony said. She wasn't in the mood to let her mother get away with statements that were completely ridiculous.

“If all you can think of to do is contradict your own mother, then you can just go on back to Titty Town,” Ethel said. “You're a bad mother anyway and I still think there was something funny about that girl you brought down here from New York.”

“Momma, there wasn't, she's a very nice young woman,” Harmony said. She was already missing Laurie and wondering if she had got home safely. Laurie was a lot more rewarding person to be with than her mother, that was for sure.

“I can't see Sty and that boy anymore, they might have fallen into that old cistern,” Ethel said. “There's an old cistern down there somewhere—it's full of snakes. If they've fallen into that cistern it would explain why I can't see them anymore.”

Harmony shut the screen door and left. She remembered what her father had said about the difficulty of getting a last word with her mother. She felt sorry that she couldn't manage to love her mother as a daughter ought to, but the fact was she couldn't. Maybe it was a failing she had passed along to Pepper, who hadn't seemed to love
her
that much, either—if she had loved her
very much, probably she would have wanted to come home at some point during the last six years of her life.

“There's snakes all over that hill, if one of them bites that boy we'll have to rush him to the hospital, it'll dirty up that oil in my car again,” Ethel said, just as Harmony got in the pickup and drove away.

The morning was still fresh, though—her mother hadn't been able to keep the sun from shining or the breeze from blowing. It was a pleasure just to drive through it. In the pasture, several cows were going about the business of being cows. Far off she saw three cowboys, loping along a fence line.

Harmony thought it would be a fun experiment to try and find her way to Neddie's house. If she didn't get it right the first time, she could stop and ask. She tried a couple of dirt roads that weren't the right dirt roads. She turned in at a couple of farmhouses that weren't the right farmhouses, either. But finally she
did
find the right farm—she knew it was right because of the name on the mailbox. The mailbox had several bullet holes in it—for some reason it seemed to be the practice to shoot at mailboxes, in that part of the country.

Harmony pulled around to the back of the house and parked beside a kind of miniature tractor, the kind people used to work in their gardens, if they had big gardens. In fact, there was a big garden right beside the house where Neddie and Dick lived. Even without knowing that much about botany Harmony could recognize corn and tomatoes and green beans and watermelons. There was also yellow squash and several other vegetables that were sort of hidden by the foliage.

While she was inspecting the garden—killing time, really; stalling might be an even better word—a large brown dog came racing around the corner of the house. The dog stopped abruptly when it saw her. It didn't bark, or appear to be hostile. It just stood there looking at her, with its tongue hanging out.

Finally Harmony decided to go on in—why put it off? She went in the back door—very few people used their front doors, in Oklahoma; front doors just seemed to be there so people could run out them in case of fires.

The back porch wasn't very neat. It was piled with rakes and
hoes and overshoes and buckets for bringing in vegetables from the garden—one bucket was still full of black-eyed peas that hadn't been snapped. There were some cucumbers and a few squash, on a brown table. But the main thing that was on the back porch was Dick himself; large as he was she didn't notice him at first because he was sitting in the shadows, in an old wicker chair. Dick was just sitting there quietly, with several magazines at his feet. When she got a little closer she saw that they were girly magazines; she recognized
Penthouse.
It seemed odd—why was her large brother-in-law sitting on his own porch in the early morning with copies of
Penthouse
on the floor at his feet? She wouldn't have thought a farmer like Dick would be the type to be reading
Penthouse
before he went to work.

More disconcerting than the girly magazines was another thing she didn't notice at first, in this case a shotgun, which Dick held across his lap. Harmony knew the hunting season didn't come in the summertime; there had to be another explanation for the shotgun—it wasn't hunting.

“Hi, Dick,” she said. “I didn't see you at first.”

“They won't neither,” Dick said.

“Well, who won't?” she asked. It was a phony question; she had a pretty good idea who Dick meant.

“My brother and my wife,” Dick said. “I expect they'll walk in here after a while—Rusty's probably getting his milking done now. He was always a late milker.

“I left my big tractor down in the west field,” he went on. “Once they spot that I expect they'll think the coast is clear. Nine times out of ten when my tractor is in the field I'm down there getting ready to plow.

“On the other hand, I may not shoot them,” he said. His large face was anguished, twisted by the need to make a decision.

“Oh, please don't shoot them, Dick,” Harmony said. “It would be a horrible tragedy if you shot Rusty and Neddie.”

“Why not?—they deserve it,” Dick said. “Neddie didn't come home last night—first time in thirty years my wife didn't come home. Rusty didn't go home, neither. It just depends on
which house they show up at, who shoots them. Melba's got a shotgun too.”

“What if they just had a car breakdown?” Harmony suggested. She wanted to try to think of some explanation for Neddie and Rusty's absence other than the obvious one, although the only reason she was at Dick's house at that hour was to tell Dick that Neddie loved Rusty and vice versa.

“I might do better just to shoot myself,” Dick said. “What do you think?”

He looked at Harmony in a trusting way.

“It'd save a shell,” he pointed out. “There's two of them and just one of me.”

“Dick, couldn't you just put the shotgun away and save both shells for hunting season?” Harmony asked. “Maybe you could just shoot some ducks or something.”

Dick shook his head.

“I don't like duck, it's got that gamy taste,” he said. “I'd rather shoot Rusty and Neddie.”

“Why, Dick?” she asked—she thought a good strategy might be to keep him talking.

“Because they had sex together,” Dick said. “Ruint my good name and Rusty's too—it's the same name.”

“Dick, what if it was something they just couldn't help?” Harmony asked. She looked out the window and saw two cottontails nibbling the grass not far from the porch.

“Can't help it—why not?” Dick said. “I never had sex with nobody's wife but my own—ain't even had sex with her in six or seven years. Lost count. If I could help it, why couldn't they?”

“Maybe you never ran into the right wife,” Harmony suggested.

Dick looked offended by this conjecture. “There wouldn't be no right wife,” he said. “I don't go having sex with other men's wives, and even if I did I think I could stay clear of my own brother's wife.”

“Dick, people are different,” Harmony pointed out. “Not everybody is as strong as you are—look at me, for example.”

Dick seemed not too interested in the notion that people were different, but he did look at her, in his trusting way, again.

“What's strong got to do with it?” he asked. “It ain't like lifting a tractor tire or nothing. You don't have to be strong not to have sex with your brother's wife.”

“You do if you're in love with her,” Harmony said. She thought it was an odd conversation—who was she to be acting like an authority on love? She had been in love with two or three married men, but fortunately never with one of her sisters' husbands. Now her brother-in-law was sitting right in front of her with a shotgun in his lap and a pile of girly magazines at his feet. The girly magazines were a saddening touch—more like a heartbreaking touch, really. Why did this big, nice man, who had been devoted to her sister for thirty years, have to be looking at
Penthouse
at six in the morning? It bespoke a sadness where sex was concerned that was a little too deep to think about. Harmony was afraid that if she let her mind dwell on it, it might incline her to the view that life was hopeless, just hopeless. If it was so hard for a good man like Dick to get a little sex, what did it mean?—after all, he was an appealing man, in his way—a kind of lumbering way.

“Is it that she won't sleep with you, Dick?” Harmony asked, remembering that he had said six or seven years had gone by without that particular thing happening. Dick and Neddie had been married a long time; maybe they had sort of worn it out—then she remembered the remark Neddie had made about wishing Dick would fall in love so maybe he would leave her alone. She tried to put herself in Neddie's place for a few minutes: What if she had a nice husband, a large man who was devoted to her, but, little by little, they stopped making love, he stopped wanting her, she got horny, then she got sad, and years passed; one day he came in and informed her that he was in love with her sister. Maybe by that point she was having to play with herself or something, to get even a little sex—maybe a vibrator or something. Once or twice during periods of no boyfriend she had actually tried a vibrator, but at some point in the process she had just
given up, turned it off, left herself alone. If it had to be such a lonely experience then it really wasn't sex, who cared?

Then, after all that despair, her man came in and told her he was in love with her sister, what would she do? Get a shotgun?

But Harmony didn't get very far with her effort to empathize. The main obstacle was that she couldn't imagine one man who would care enough about her to stay around thirty years—thirty months was exceptional in her experience—quite exceptional, in fact; thirty days was closer to the average. The long-term thing was something she had no experience of and really couldn't imagine. Meanwhile Dick was sitting there with the gun in his lap and
Penthouse
at his feet. His big face was gathering as if he might be about to cry—even to yell, or something. Just seeing Dick look like that was frightening—Harmony was thinking that maybe running out the back door wouldn't be such a bad idea. Before she could run, though, Dick suddenly leapt to his feet and fired both barrels of the shotgun through the window and the screen. Evidently he was aiming at the cottontails, because both cottontails sort of disappeared; so did the window and most of the screen. The sound was so loud that Harmony flinched; she really felt like running, but she hadn't delivered the message she had promised to deliver—if she didn't deliver it now, she would be breaking a promise to her sister. She thought she ought to try and keep her promise to her sister while they were all still alive.

Scared as she was, she wasn't as scared as she was sad for Dick, her brother-in-law. Why was it that three decades of loyalty had earned him only defeat and despair?

“I can't kill Neddie and Rusty now, them was the last two shells—I'm relieved,” Dick said.

“Dick, they want to get married,” Harmony said. “Neddie just told me yesterday. She wants a divorce so she can marry Rusty.”

Dick looked at her, in shock.

“They want to get married?” he said. “What about the wife Rusty's already got?”

“I don't know, I haven't met her,” Harmony said. “I guess Rusty's hoping she'll give him a divorce if you'll give Neddie one.”

Dick carefully propped the empty shotgun against the wall; Harmony could smell the gunpowder and see, out of the corner of her eye, the remains of the dead bunnies.

“Well,” Dick said, “that's another relief. If they want to marry and live proper, I got no objections. I was afraid they were just going to sleep around until there was nothing left of our good name.

“I wonder if they've been wanting to marry this whole time?” he asked. “That would explain a lot. It's nearly twenty years that I've been worrying about this. If they've been wanting to marry all this time then it's a shame they didn't tell me. They wasted about half their lives, not to mention half of mine.”