After the War (11 page)

And Odessa smiled back, even as she murmured, “Yes’m.”

Cynthia wished that Abigail had come down for the funeral, although she had urged her not to. “Wartime travel, you know,” she had said to her daughter. “Someone might ask you, ‘Is this trip necessary?’ Like all those signs.” But she did
wish for Abigail and, more fleetingly, she wondered where in hell Derek was.

Curiously, Deirdre too had a fleeting thought of Derek; she thought, Now that I’m widowed, maybe Derek—? But what an evil thought, and with Russ just barely dead, and so terribly, killed by that colored man, probably. She began to cry again—even if Russ hadn’t really loved her anymore. And then for him to go off and die in Texas, of all places. That was where the train was when he fell, or that man pushed him or whatever happened. And then they couldn’t even get his body home. Or she let herself be talked out of bringing his body home: a lot of conversation with people in charge of transportation, all that, until it got to the point where she was just about told that it’d be unpatriotic for her to insist, Russ not being in the service or anything. So there was the coffin, empty, just weights in it, and Russ still back in Texas. Or the body of Russ was in Texas, decaying there: his immortal soul was up in Heaven, Deirdre had to believe that it was.

More or less accidentally, Melanctha and Graham were standing close to each other—so that everyone could see how much alike they looked. Russ’s eyes, and his hair, right there on the both of them. The brother and sister. Never mind all those years when Deirdre first came back to town and pretended that Graham was her brother; he was Russ’s son, no doubt in anyone’s mind about that anymore. The two of them looked especially alike that afternoon, with their dazed deep eyes, which were Russ’s eyes, dark blue, without tears.

Dolly Bigelow, who had drunk too much—as though to
prove her own too often expressed view that women shouldn’t ought to drink—Dolly said, “It’s just like Russ was right here with us, don’t you-all feel it? Drunk as all get out and not really showing he was drunk, not showing anyone the first thing about how he really felt about anything. I’m going to miss Russ a whole lot, I just know that I am, but at the same time I’m not going to know who it is that I’m missing.” And then, as unaccountably as a summer storm, tears overwhelmed Dolly—as though she could not stand the rest of her life without Russ Byrd.

Staring at weeping Dolly, Cynthia tried to keep what she felt from showing too apparently on her face, and then she turned away—but not before her eyes had caught the eyes of Odessa, and a look was exchanged between the two of them, between Cynthia and Odessa—a look that was the equivalent of a long conversation, a talk that very probably they would never have, but that would contain all or almost all of their thoughts about Dolly, and about Russ. About Horace, and Harry, and even Derek. Abby, and Nellie. About this beautiful and impossible place in which they both lived.

9

A
FTER the death and funeral of Russ, instead of the longed-for arrival of spring, heavy, unrelenting rains set in, crippling and almost drowning the little town of Pinehill. Out in the country, the red clay roads were too slick for cars, and red streams rushed through the gullies of erosion in the fields. Rain and wind flapped the sides of the tarpaper shacks where people out there lived—without floors in their houses, most of them, so that in cold, rainy weather they walked on wet dirt, with cold bare feet. Odessa, who used to live out there, like that, with Horace and all her children, in dreams was still in that tiny house, where the wind whistled in through cracks. Now, waking in the middle of the night with a pressure on her bladder, she would almost reach for the tin pot under the bed—before further waking to remember that this is the Bairds’ garage apartment, where she lives, and the bright clean white bathroom is right there, the door almost next to her bed, no need to reach for any pot. But these days she lives alone, no restless Horace thrashing and snorting beside her in the bed, and all the children off now with husbands and wives of their own—all except Nellie, not married and working now over to Raleigh. The tarpaper shack and the red clay roads were still more real to Odessa, though. Her
feet were still cold, in spite of the rabbit-fur slippers that Mrs. Baird got for her. The Bairds and their house could vanish like a breath from her life. You can’t count on whites to stay the same, and mean the same whenever they talk to you, Odessa knew that, although the Bairds and especially Mrs. Baird, Mrs. Cynthia, seemed much more reliable than most, probably on account of the Bairds’ being Yankees and not used to the ways of white folks around these parts. But Mr. Harry could die in the war just as easy as Mr. Russ Byrd could, and
did
, and then where would they put Mrs. Odessa Jones, especially with Horace not around? Horace: she did not let herself think about what could happen and maybe already had to Horace, out there somewhere in the rain, in some rain or other.

“I declare, every colored person in this town has someway sent in word that she’s laid up with what they all call ‘misery in the laig.’ ” Dolly’s voice for imitating Negro speech was, to Cynthia’s Connecticut ear, more like a burlesque of her own Piedmont North Carolina dialect, or whatever it was.

“But the roads,” Cynthia objected. “You really can’t drive out there.”

“Got nothing to do with roads,” Dolly snapped. “You think every maid in town’s got a car? It’s even the ones that walk in here every day, it’s like in the rain they all go on some sit-down strike, like the miners. Though with these darkies it’s more like a lie-down strike.”

Along the phone line, bad feeling between the two women surged high. Cynthia had reacted strongly (badly) to “darkies,” not to mention the very idea of those poor women, and men too, being expected to walk into town on those horrible
wet clay roads. And Dolly was having familiar thoughts and feelings about how Yankees, as smart as they all thought they were, did not know or understand the first G.D. thing about the colored down here, and the way things are supposed to go. After the war, Dolly thought, things would get back more to normal, the colored back to their normal places, working for folks and showing up like they were meant to do. She was about to explain some of this to Cynthia—or try to, Cynthia could be as stubborn as a mule, for all her Vassar College smarts—when, fortunately for everyone (maybe), the long-distance operator broke in.

“Mrs. Cynthia Baird? Is this Mrs. Baird, at 3871, in Pine-hill? I have an important call for you.”

Cynthia’s heart jolted, hard and cold, as she braced herself for the news. Somewhere within her a scream broke out: Harry!

As Dolly dithered, “Well, I’ll get right off the line. Cynthia, you call me right back now, I’ll want to know—”

“Dolly, will you please shut up?”

A loud sniff, and then a louder click, and then a male voice which was
not
the operator’s spoke. “Cynthia? Good Christ, the trouble I’ve had getting through to you, you and your insane Southern lady friend. Listen, I’m in Hilton, and I really need to talk to you. I’ve got a car, and I’d like to start the drive over right now. I assume that’s all right?”

Oh
. Derek. Feeling faint, pounded and shaken by too many, too strong emotions, Cynthia said yes, of course—and later wondered what it was that he had asked.

An hour or so after that, an hour during which she drank some tea, and had some of Odessa’s good chicken-vegetable soup, Cynthia still was shaken, though now by a new set of fears and anxieties: what was it that Derek needed to talk
about so badly that he had an operator cut in, an emergency interruption? Could Derek possibly have some news of Harry, some source?

Rainwater dripped from his hat as Derek removed it, and from his trench coat, which he took back outside to shake off. He said, “Talk about cats and dogs. This is ferocious!” and he smiled and reached for Cynthia, to kiss.

The kiss was more affectionate than passionate, a little hurried. Not lingering—most clearly not a lingering kiss.

So that Cynthia wondered if he had not come, after all, to demand her hand. To forcefully claim her. Which she had seen as the only explanation that offered itself for his haste, his determination.

But right away he told her, “I want to talk to you about Russ. About James Russell Lowell Byrd. It’s a very important interview. That you’re part of, I mean. Do you think his wife would see me too, and maybe some of his kids? The daughter with the funny name? Maybe tonight, I thought. I don’t have a hell of a lot of time.”

He had put her through all that distress for questions about Russ? The panic over Harry—and the quite other panic to do with Derek himself? The skein of complicated emotions, both conflicting and intense, had left Cynthia weak and angry. Rather stiffly she asked Derek, “Shall I call Deirdre right now? Is that what you want me to do?”

He gave her a quick look, not acknowledging stiffness on her part, anything wrong. “If you don’t mind,” he said formally.

On the phone Deirdre said, “Derek McFall? Oh, I’d love to see him, really I would, you tell him that. It’s been, let’s see,
over fifteen years? He was just in our school for that one year.” Her voice trailed off, remembering, and then came back. “But today is a bad one for me and Melanctha too. This lawyer’s coming over, ’long about five o’clock. So Derek would either have to get here real, real quick, or else make it some other day.”

Receiving this message, which Cynthia delivered to him entire, Derek stood up. “Well, that doesn’t give me a hell of a lot of choice, does it?” He grinned unconvincingly. “I’m sorry, angel. But I’ll be back before you know it.”

“You know where the house is?”

“You showed me once, remember? Out in the woods past the Hightower house?”

Did she show Derek that house? Cynthia did not remember such a drive with him, or any conversation about it. Though both must have occurred, to make him set off with such confidence, and so quickly.

What she really—intensely, wrenchingly wondered was: How much had she told Derek about her own connection with Russ? She and Derek tended to drink a fair amount; they did not get drunk, no lurchings about or falls or blackouts. (Cynthia had observed all that behavior in her previous life, in Connecticut, and to some extent in Georgetown, more recently.) But she and Derek drank enough so that the course of an evening, its threads and themes of conversation, sometimes became blurred the next day in Cynthia’s mind, not to mention the details and nuances of repeated acts of love, which she would have liked to recall as vividly as possible.

Derek liked a good martini before dinner, and so did Cynthia, something she had discovered with him. And then along with dinner they drank what they called “Dago red,” meaning cheap Italian Chianti, which was sold more or less in bulk, in
large green bottles. Those dinners, usually cooked by Cynthia, less often taken in restaurants, were marvellous fun, the fun wine-fueled and fueled too by the anticipation of later pleasure, great pleasure in bed.

But what had she said in the course of those hours of heightened, delighted conversation? Drink made Cynthia voluble, she knew that, profligate with confidences, even confessions. Like a drunken Santa Claus, she bestowed bits of gossip plus some intimate glimpses of herself—all gifts. And what had she told Derek?

If Deirdre’s lawyer was coming at five, Derek should be back at Cynthia’s by five-fifteen or so, she thought, but then she further thought: Deirdre said “long about five,” which can mean almost any time at all, in the long rainy, chilling evening.

The rain made a walk impractical for Cynthia—and Derek might always come while she was out. She turned on the radio but something was wrong, only static came across—or bombs; it had the sound of a bombardment. Outside everything dripped, the dark thick heavy leaves of the rhododendron, long pine needles, and the bare black branches of winter trees—as though spring had been frightened backward by the rain, retreating into invisibility.

Derek got back to Cynthia’s house at five after seven. He said, “Christ, the lawyer just got there. And it seemed sort of rude to leave before he did.”

Wanting to say, How about rude to me? Cynthia instead asked how it went. Did he get what he wanted to know from Deirdre and Melanctha?

Melanctha was not there, Derek told her, he did not know where Melanctha was. And yes, Deirdre had talked a lot, a surprising amount. “Generous” was how Derek described it.
She talked about her son, about Graham. Did Cynthia know that, that he was really her son, not her brother?

“Oh, we all figured that one out sometime back,” despite herself Cynthia snapped. “He’s the dead spit of Russ, as they say around here. Have you seen him?”

“No, but I never really met Russ either. Deirdre thinks I did, but I’m sure I’d remember.” He smiled, not drunkenly but in a way that told Cynthia that he had had a few drinks with Deirdre—Deirdre the new widow—as they raked over her life with Russ.

One of Cynthia’s reactions to this perception—shared drinks, a long happy time—was to think, Then why should I tell him a goddam thing? Who gives a damn about his lousy article? I for sure don’t.

Derek said, “How about dinner? You feel like fixing a sandwich here, or would you rather go out?”

“Out would be better, I think.”

The Pinehill Hotel, which catered to visiting parents and alumni, as well as unwary travellers, served stiffly formal dinners, overpriced and not very well cooked, in a too bright dining room. The only good thing there was the plenitude of fresh raw oysters, which were reliably great—if you liked raw oysters, which both Cynthia and Derek very much did.

The only other out-for-dinner possibility near Pinehill was a run-down barbecue roadhouse, about seven miles off, called The Pines. Much favored by students, it was known for serving beer to anyone at almost any hour—and for the hottest, possibly messiest barbecue for miles around. They chose The Pines, or rather, Derek did.

The drive out there seemed long, down the winding wet gray-white concrete highway, between high red clay embankments—now shining, wet, and slick—and past dark
dim wet woods. And his choice of The Pines struck Cynthia as both perverse and slightly hostile; neither she nor Derek was a big fan of barbecue, and the students there tended to be rowdy, noisy. As they walked in, they were instantly assailed by smoke and strong smells of pork and tomato and spice.