In An Arid Land (7 page)

John, the eldest, would be a carpenter, a cabinetmaker, perhaps even a jewelry maker; and Julia, beautiful and fierce and wild, she would marry well if they were careful; Irene, poor Irene, almost blind from reading, she would be a fine teacher.

And then there was Walter, Walter, Jr., who could compute a row of figures faster than an adding machine, whose fourth grade term essay was found so worthy as to be published in the local newspaper, who even then had saved enough nickels and dimes from odd jobs and bottle refunds that his account at First Karankawa rivaled the accounts of some families. There was no telling with Walter; he could do anything. She longed to see him just then.

"Where is that boy?" she said to the window.

IV

As if in answer to her question he appeared. He emerged from the woods, running. He ran through the open gate, across the yard and around the house. It was time finally and she set her face to an attitude of cold stone. She would meet him with this face, absolutely cold and objective, a judge's face, almost cruel, not because she wanted to; she had to. It was the only way to keep him, to keep him hers as long as possible. The will achieves and her will would see to it that they the McIntyres prevailed.

And here he was, standing boylike in the tall narrow doorway of the empty room where just the day before there had been nine pieces of her mother's fine furniture, handed down to be cared for, tossed yesterday like so much cordwood onto that trailer Mr. McIntyre had purchased with half of what they had left. The boy stood there, holding his cap, silent, waiting for her to speak.

"To tarry is a sin," she said with her cold stony voice, the voice to match the face, the attitude. "Did you know that?"

"Yessum," he said, lowering his eyes, turning his cap.

Her heart heaved in her chest, for she longed to go to him and stoop before him and hug him to her as most women would have done upon a son's return. He looked like something made of china and painted by hands that knew exactly what it is about a boy that makes a mother's heart heave.

"Then why were you so long in returning? Why did you make us wait? You see that the others have had to go on without us."

"Yessum."

"Tell me. Tell me why."

He thought of the stone in his pocket and thought that was the answer, the stone and the woods and the deer and everything else in the woods, but he knew it was not the answer she wanted. He thought he should say this place, that place out there, those woods which I'm not sure I can bear to leave they kept me. This is what he should have said, but it would not do.

"Tell me," she said.

"I'm a sinner and I ask God's forgiveness."

It was the abject voice of abject humility he had learned so well. It was easier to be abject in the face of unreason.

"Did he keep you?"

"Yessum," he lied, very quietly.

"How? Tell me."

"You told me to ask"

"Hush, now."

He squirmed, boylike, against her unreason.

She said, "Well?"

He knew. The boy knew what she wanted, wanting it without the degrading need to ask. "He said, 'no.' "

Her face of cold stone became colder and stonier. It was what she had expected, but again her heart heaved in her chest and for a moment she forgot herself. "He won't give us any time?"

The boy, eyes down, shook his head under his mother's gaze.

"Go and wash your face," she said and turned to the window for the last time. As the sounds of water pulsed through the pipes above her she looked out upon the yard, her fig tree, like an enormous teardrop, the listing and paintless picket fence, the woods that would have made them privileged.

She said, "Lord, be with us," as the pipes went silent.

They met at the front door, he looking up, expectant, still timid, she looking down with a faraway abstraction in her eyes. She nodded once toward the door and with one hand atop the other he slowly opened it. She stepped out gracefully, ladylike, with pride. They looked at each other again. This time she smiled.

"You look quite handsome today," she said.

The boy's hand felt like something retrieved from long ago. Small, cool, moist, it caused her own hand to close around it tightly and to lead it gently. The hand was so sweet that she wanted to taste it, to touch it to her lips and she remembered when the small hand was even smaller, even sweeter.

They walked the twelve blocks to the church without speaking and without seeing anyone they knew. Everyone they knew was in church already and the street was quiet but for the songs of the birds and the diminishing rumble of the morning train which came to them from the tracks across town. The pure sunshine in the elms and oaks, the pure empty taste of the March air, the pure and perfect stillness it all spoke of one thing: her Sunday.

There was the car and behind it the humiliating trailer, covered with a tarpaulin the color of an engineer's overalls. They had parked it, thank goodness, at the farthest corner of the church's gravel lot, under Sister Lamb's pecan tree.

Mother and son went up the steps. The voices from within the white building were doing great violence to her favorite hymn.

"Goin' afar," they sang as if the words were so much wheat being processed, "upon the mountain, bringin' the wanderer back again . . ." and they went on wavering through the verse.

She and the boy waited at the double doors in the tiny foyer for the congregation to finish the hymn which she knew by heart and in her mind she sang along with them. Then it ended and she heard the shuffling feet, the rustling of Sunday clothes, the coughs of the men as they sat upon the hard polished pews and prepared themselves for the sermon that would go on too long. She reached for the door, but an ugly image of Brother Jordan, the preacher, rose in her mind and she stopped herself. As the boy gazed up at her, wondering, she imagined the preacher's broad condemning face looking out at her from above the pulpit. It would condemn her as a failure were she to walk in now, late, especially now, now that they were leaving. To fail, the face would say, is to sin and you have failed us all.

She turned with the boy's hand still in hers and led him away. The serene morning beckoned to her, drew her from the shadowy steps onto the bright and silent sidewalk. Up the street they walked to the corner where they could glimpse Karankawa's tiny downtown square. She led them away from the square to the street behind the church and they turned again. She walked as if in a trance. The boy saw this, felt it in the way she led him onward and, though his hand had begun to ache in her grip, he said nothing, did nothing but follow.

They turned again, into a wide alley behind the familiar houses of the neighborhood. That's when they saw the man.

He was digging in a garbage can, his head almost hidden inside the opening. The boy and his mother stopped and quite suddenly, as if sensing their presence, the man looked up, straightened himself beside the garbage can. His clothes were old and torn and dirty and the toe of a sock jutted through a hole in one of his gray shoes. His whiskered face, like his clothes, was old and torn and dirty, and there was something more. It was in the eyes and the boy understood it as fear, a hungry kind of fear, a wizened terror, the likes of which he had never seen before and he pulled on his mother's hand trying to back away. The man backed away too, like a spooked animal, glancing around, crouching, and then he ran, casting looks at them over his shoulder. He stumbled, then ran again.

His mother said, "Get, get!" as she would to a dog. The boy felt her shiver and her free hand rose by instinct to protect her neck. "A white man," she muttered in her confusion.

Quickly, turning, almost stumbling herself, she led them out of the alley then in the direction they had entered and they retraced their steps toward the church. These new steps were much faster, more erratic; these steps jarred the body and hurt him.

"Mother?" the boy asked after a proper interval, with great courage. "Was that man a hobo?"

"Hush," she said and hurried onward.

V

Rufus Hickory lowered his heavy body from the porch of the cabin and walked through the meager clearing into his woods. The boy had been gone for some time now. The old man had given great thought to what his leaving meant but had found no answer.

There was a place he always went at such moments to talk to God. He did not believe in the God of the Christians anymore; he believed in a kindhearted God who listened without condemnation, who longed to help the troubled whether he could or not.

Along the narrow path through the trees he went until he came to the bridge over the creek. This was his special place.

He sat down and he prayed, asking for guidance and deliverance. It was all still a mystery to him, vague and troubling, but he felt calmer in his heart and thought the answer would be revealed to him in time. Tomorrow perhaps, when he went to see for sure that they had gone, or the day after.

He rose and walked across the bridge to the other side. It was here that the deer came to be fed. He stood there listening, thinking, until he felt something pressing against the sole of his boot and he looked down. Footprints, left by small shoes, marred the rich black soil. Walter had stopped here. Walter had taken something from the soil.

Rufus Hickory moved his foot and saw the stone that must have been loosened by Walter's digging. The stone was the color of sulfur. It warmed in his hand when he picked it up.

VI

The service had ended. The congregation had risen, moved and milled in the foyer and was spilling onto the steps. There was quite a lot of talk about the McIntyres, Elvira especially, and shaded glances given the old Ford and its trailer parked in the far corner. Was she so proud, so haughty as to deny them their goodbyes? Could she not face them now that the day had arrived? Why, for heaven's sake, was she sitting there like a queen in her place in the car with her youngest beside her?

Mr. McIntyre and the three eldest did their part the kisses, the handshakes, the farewells and Mr. McIntyre explained an illness in the boy that had kept his wife away. But he was not one to say much, so the questions of the women went mostly unanswered and none was so bold as to venture toward the car.

Only the preacher, Brother Jordan, carrying his Bible, followed when the four McIntyres had finished with the goodbyes and the hugs and the handshakes and left the steps behind.

"Well, Elvira," said Brother Jordan through the car window. "We'll miss you and your good work here."

She smiled coldly, to herself, without looking at him.

"I hope Walter is better."

"Yes, he's fine," she said, again without looking at him. "Just a touch of something," she lied and felt the cold reproaching stares of her children warm upon her face.

Then Mr. McIntyre had cranked the car and as it grumbled all of the family got in and seated themselves, the three eldest in back and the parents like bookends beside the youngest in front. The preacher, his face grave and pious, touched the mother's arm in the window and said, "Find peace in prayer, Elvira."

"I have all the peace I need," she came back sharply.

But then she looked at him. His broad earnest face carried no condemnation. His large blue eyes were sad at her leaving, sad over the turmoil in her heart. They had known each other for twelve years; she had served as his secretary on several occasions and she had taught Sunday school at one time; he had come to the house every day during Mr. McIntyre's recovery and he had baptized each of her three eldest. Why, in a year or so he would have baptized her youngest, too, but of course now it would be done by someone else, a stranger, off there in the city.

"I'm sorry," she said quite suddenly. "I'm sorry for everything," she said with a strained and painful passion, awkward and beseeching, gazing into his bland but questioning face. She reached out for his hand but found that he had already backed away. "Don't, Mama," whispered her youngest, leaning close up behind her; all the others were silent in their confusion and their shame. She felt again their stares full of reproach and an overpowering weakness seemed to drain the blood from her arms; she laid them gently in her lap as the well of emotion in her chest began to overflow. Against her cheek she felt something, a kiss, and in her ear she heard something: "Don't, Mama."

Her eyes tried to look at him in tenderness, her heart tried to let her smile, but her God would not allow it.

"Let's go, Walter," she said. And then the car was moving, the world was moving, though every heart and tongue was still, and the children waved to the few waving members of the congregation still gathered on the church steps. "Goodbye," they called.

Through the town they went one last time. There was more activity now. A few cars around the square, people strolling on the sidewalks, a father and son tossing a ball in the weedy lot of the yellow-brick schoolhouse. It was all so familiar and yet already so distant, so remote from them, as if they were travelers from far away and just passing through this little town on their way to something else. No one spoke; they had nothing to say except to themselves. Only one of them would ever see Karankawa again and when he returned, as an old man scarred and bitter and full of regret, it would appear to him exactly as it had that day, upon his leaving, as if the place would never change, could not change, as if he himself were still the same.

Young Walter, sitting on a small wooden lunch basket between his parents, said out loud, with childish fire and conviction, and to the astonishment of the others, "I'll bring us back, you'll see. It's our land, his'n mine. I'll bring us back."

His mother stroked his hair to calm him, to correct him, but he held tightly the sulfur-colored stone in his palm.

I

For more than an hour there had been only the wildflowers. She hadn't noticed them at first, before the morning overcast had burned away, before the spring sunlight had drawn out their colors and shapes. But now she concentrated on them as something distinct and wonderful in the otherwise down-dragging landscape along the highway. The flowers stood in small clumps on both low-sloping walls of the ditch and in thinner patches, less often, under the regiments of trees in the forest beyond. Every so often she would see a cluster of three or four reaching up innocently from a crack in the pavement and each time she had the urge to pick these before the tires of a truck or a car could crush them.