Enduring (58 page)

When Vernon arrives the next afternoon, bringing a load of books and various supplies and groceries in his red pick-up truck, she tells him about the visit from Clifford Stone. Vernon says the man must not be a true hermit if he wants to socialize with Latha. She says she doubts he will come again. But he’s got to return that lantern, Vernon says. If he doesn’t, I’ll go get it from him. And sure enough, right after Vernon leaves, almost as if he was waiting for him to leave, the Bluff-Dweller appears, carrying not one but two lanterns. Perhaps the other is for finding his way home again. She almost does not recognize him at first, because he has abandoned his Indian attire in favor of good shoes, creased trousers, an Oxford shirt with a necktie and a jacket. “Getting married so soon?” she asks him. He laughs and says no, he just wants to look nice for her. His breath reeks of Chism’s Dew. His dog tries to hide away from the cats. She invites Clifford in for supper and serves him Vernon’s pork chops, and some for herself. He asks if she hasn’t just had supper with her guest. “Guest?” she says. “That wasn’t any guest. That was my grandson. And I can never get that boy to stay and eat with me. He just keeps me supplied with whatever I need, including this box of books he brought today. Look and see if there’s any you’d like to take with you.” He does, and picks out a novel by Fred Chappell, saying he’ll return it to her. Then from his coat pocket he takes an envelope and gives it to her.

“I need to ask a favor,” he says. “That’s a letter to my ex-wife. The fifth or sixth draft of a letter I’ve been revising. I make the hike to the Parthenon post office just twice a year, and I’m not due to go there again until next November, so maybe you could be so kind as to mail it for me? It’s not urgent, but it’s something I need to get off my chest.” She tells him that she’ll be glad to put it in her box for pick-up by the route carrier. He says that it hasn’t been sealed yet, so she should feel free to read it before sealing it.

“That’s dramatic,” she says. “It’s not a suicide note, I hope.”

He makes a wry grin. “I wouldn’t call it that. But who knows?”

“You know,” she says.

They talk about many things during supper, which culminates with cherry pie and ice cream, with coffee. He has had a double helping of the pork chops, which she explains are made by her grandson from the free-ranging razorback hogs that Clifford has seen all over the place. She explains Vernon’s “industry” to him and tells him how to find the plant, which is operated by George Dinsmore, who, she discovers, is Clifford’s cousin. She says that with the help of his friend Day Whittacker, Vernon is doing research in an effort to find a cure for cancer. She learns a few things about Clifford. That he had once worked as chief director of an antiquities foundation in Boston, he has gastrointestinal distress among other maladies, and his hair is prematurely gray; he’s scarcely forty. Dressed as he is now, he is good-looking; more than presentable. He returns the compliment, saying she’s the loveliest older woman he’s ever seen.

“I like that ‘older’ instead of ‘old,’” she says. “I’ll always be older, but never old.”

They are almost flirtatious, and she finds herself doing something she had not done for many years, having a sexual fantasy. She blushes at the very thought of it, but indulges it, allows it to flourish and to entertain her and even to arouse her. She could so easily take him off to bed. But she restrains herself.

After he has gone, she feels strongly tempted to read the letter he has written to his ex-wife. There is nothing more interesting to do. He has given his permission. The woman’s address is in Vermont. He has already told her he has no children. He has already told her the amusing story of how he had one of his foundation’s suppliers construct a life-sized doll as an exact replica of this woman who had been his wife. Latha reads the first paragraph: “My father was buried beside my mother today and I inadvertently stumbled upon the funeral dressed in my Indian trappings. Few people there. None of Daddy’s friends. I don’t think he had any. Mostly local people, being polite: one of them an elderly lady, recently widowed, whose husband’s funeral I recently stumbled upon in the same cemetery. After Daddy’s funeral, I showed my sister and brother-in-law where I live. I don’t think they were impressed so much as put out with the effort of getting there. Sis got high on my moonshine and reminded me of some things I had safely forgotten. She also revealed to me something I had never known but only sensed: that once, when I was five, my father tried to do away with me, he tried to smother me while I was sleeping, but was caught and stopped by my mother, who, however, was forbidden by him from ever smothering me with affection thereafter until her death.” Having read that far, Latha cannot stop herself from reading the whole letter, all four pages of it, particularly his account of how the night of the funeral he had made his first substantial human contact in years by visiting Latha, “almost twice my age, but lovely, and not lonely as a widow should properly be. Perhaps I will begin to see her quite often.” The prospect of seeing Clifford Stone quite often thrills her. Perhaps she will even be able to sober him up.

Some mornings she wakes with no memory of Every’s having left her, and thus is surprised that she cannot hear the familiar sound of his axe chopping wood for the cookstove. She has to run her hand down into the vacant depressions of his side of the bed to remind herself that it is empty. She thinks of how nice it would be some morning to find the Bluff-Dweller lying there, but scolds herself for such unrealistic fantasies. She thinks of ways that she might be able to save the Bluff-Dweller apart from sleeping with him. She rises and puts on her sweater and jeans and goes out to feed the cats and the dog and the chickens. She has named one of the new kittens, a handsome marmalade, Clifford.

She sits in the breezeway and watches the world go by, or watches a dozen of Vernon’s hogs go thundering down the road, raising dust, on their way home to be fed by their computerized slops. Soon the oak trees would be shedding their acorns, and the pigs would chomp all day at the mast beneath the oaks of her land and sleep the whole night there. Sometimes it makes the cats nervous. A cat and a hog are so different. For all her cats, Latha somehow feels closer to the hogs, but couldn’t imagine having one sit in her lap. “I’m becoming a silly old woman,” she reflects. She hears a French horn blaring,
Older, not old. And never silly
.

She licks and seals Clifford’s letter to his ex-wife and takes it out to her box beside the road and raises the flag. Soon thereafter she sees the flag is down and goes back out there to retrieve her day’s mail: two letters, one from her oldest granddaughter named after her out in California, enclosing photographs of her share of Latha’s thirteen great-grandchildren; the other letter is on departmental stationery from the history department of some university in Missouri, from a woman who has learned Latha’s address from a colleague in political science who is doing a biography of the governor who had succeeded Jacob Ingledew. She says she understands that the house Jacob Ingledew built is still erect and she would love to visit it and take some photographs if that is at all possible. Latha knows that the house has been empty ever since Lola Ingledew died. Well, it still has all its furniture, just as the store across the road from it still has all its merchandise and dry goods, but both are empty of humans. Her grandson Vernon has inherited both buildings but probably would have no objection to a visit. Latha includes a rough map, drawn by herself, showing how to find Stay More, which most strangers simply are not able to find, and how to find her dogtrot cabin. Come anytime you like, and stay as long as you can. Sincerely, Latha Bourne Dill.

One day she has a visit from Jick Chism, the young moonshiner, whom she has known for years and likes very much. He brings her another stoneware demijohn of Chism’s Dew, although she’s hardly started on the previous one. They discuss their mutual friend, Clifford Stone, and they try to come up with ways to “save” him. One possibility is that this professor-woman who is coming to visit, Eliza Cunningham, might take a shine to the Bluff-Dweller and provide him with the affection that has been missing from his life. Another possibility—Latha says she would consider it a large favor to her if Jick would begin a gradual watering-down of his potent product. Maybe, over time, they could wean Clifford of his addiction. Jick is somewhat skeptical of this notion, but agrees to try it.

The next time she sees Clifford, it isn’t dusk but broad day, and he invites her to go fishing. A contest: her cane-pole and a hook baited with worms against his atlatl and spears. She catches a few tasty sunperch; he spears a catfish and some hogsuckers, which are scarcely fit to eat. What he really wants to do is talk with her about the body of Eli Willard the peddler, which Jick has shown to him in the old Ingledew store. “What is your version of the reason he hasn’t been buried?” he asks her. She tries to explain the old unwritten law that the Stay More cemetery is only for Stay Morons. She tells him of the itinerant’s itinerary, being moved from the store to the mill to Dan’s house and back to the store. She thinks the few remaining Stay Morons ought to hold a meeting and vote on giving Eli Willard a proper burial in the Stay More cemetery.

At supper while they are eating their catch, he asks for the whole story of her life. She doesn’t think it can be done in one sitting, and indeed it takes mornings, even days, for weeks. Possibly Jick has begun watering the moonshine, because Clifford has practically forgotten what a
morning
is. Nearly everything that has been revealed in these 446 pages by Sharon would be revealed by her to this good man who has stolen part of her heart, and whose soul she is determined to save. Of course there are certain things she has told Sharon which modesty prevents her from telling Clifford, but it is almost as if she is rehearsing the life story that she will one day tell to her granddaughter. She has only reached as far as page 218, however, the beginning of the dramatic story of Every’s rescue of her from the state asylum when, one day, Clifford fails to appear. The day passes and she waits in considerable anxiety for him. Thus, when toward evening a green automobile pulls into her yard, and a young woman steps out and introduces herself as Eliza Cunningham, Latha is so overcome with puzzlement over Clifford’s absence that she can’t be as hospitable as she should. Eliza is prettier than Latha has dreamt: long auburn hair unparted, green eyes, lovely small figure which would match Clifford’s short stature.
A living doll
is Latha’s thought before she remembers Clifford’s experience with an unliving doll. Latha welcomes her, addressing her as Dr. Cunningham, for she does possess a PhD in history. “Please call me Liz,” the woman says.

Chapter forty-six

L
atha gives Eliza Cunningham a walking tour of the town. She shows her the abandoned buildings that were her former home and post office, the sites of the bank and mill, both now gone, Doc Swain’s clinic, Doc Plowright’s clinic, and, finally, her objective: the two-storey Jacob Ingledew house, which had become a hotel. She takes her into the lobby, appreciating her expressions of awe and delight. When Eliza Cunningham steps into the room which still contains the original furniture that had belonged to the Woman Whom We Cannot Name, she promptly faints. Latha, who almost all her life has been familiar with the experience of fainting, waits. She takes a pillow from the bed and places it beneath Liz’s head. While waiting, she examines a gold-framed photograph on the bureau. The photo had been taken by Eli Willard when he came to town as an itinerant photographer early in the last century; although the Woman had been much older at that time, the resemblance to Liz is indisputable. Latha has always been skeptical of the notion that Day Whittacker is the reincarnation of Daniel Lyam Montross (there is little if any physical resemblance) but the young woman on the floor is a dead ringer for the woman in the photograph. And Latha knows that she has not faked her fainting; one may fake an orgasm but not a faint. She waits a long time for Liz to wake. When she finally wakes, Liz asks Latha if it might be possible for her to move into this room. Latha says she would need to get permission from her grandson Vernon, but that should be no problem. Latha shows her the framed photograph of the Woman Whom We Cannot Name. Liz appears ready to faint again but collects herself and says, “Is that what I will look like when I grow old?”

The Woman Whom We
Can
Name moves into the room which she claims was her room for many years, and upstairs in the Spare Room or attic she discovers a trunk which contains most of the clothing that had belonged to the Woman Whom We Cannot Name, all of it a perfect fit, and, borrowing an iron from Latha, begins wearing it. She tells Latha that she is dying to meet Vernon. Does he look like his ancestor Jacob? Latha has started thinking of herself as a matchmaker, but the man for Liz is not Vernon but Clifford. Latha tries to explain Vernon’s relationship with Jelena, but as Fate would have it, Jelena has decided to fly out to California to visit the children she’d had with Mark Duckworth, so Vernon is temporarily alone, and Latha can’t stop Liz from going up to the double-bubble house to meet him. She has as an excuse the wish to discuss with him her idea about restoring the town of Stay More to its former glory, just as she is trying to restore the Woman Whom We Cannot Name to her former glory.

Latha’s hope is that Clifford will soon return and be introduced to Liz. But he does not. Latha is on the verge of hiking up the mountain in search of him (she knows where his cavern is) when Jick Chism appears with a strange story: Clifford has decided to give Eli Willard a burial in the Bluff-Dweller fashion, beneath the floor of his cavern, and with Jick’s help has moved the body on a stretcher up there, and the two men have dug a grave for it, in the process uncovering the grave of an Indian maiden’s body. They intend to have a Bluff-Dweller ceremony for the burial at sunset, but Clifford has taken badly sick. Jick has already notified George Dinsmore of this, and he needs Latha’s help in notifying the other residents of the town so that they can all trek up to the cavern to attend the ceremony and rescue the Bluff-Dweller. Latha is disappointed that Liz will meet the Bluff-Dweller under such circumstances, but she alerts Liz, and some others: Vernon, Day and Diana with their small son, Hank, and a few others, who make a kind of pilgrimage up the mountain, some of them (not Latha) riding in George’s 4×4 truck, where they find the Indian burial ceremony in process, just in time, at sunset, to lower the body into the grave. Clifford is scarcely able to stand and refuses to join in the singing of “Farther Along,” so Jick leads it in his excellent counter tenor, at the end of which Clifford falls headlong into the grave. They lift his unconscious form out, and George rushes him off to the hospital at Harrison.