Jordan County (25 page)

Bristol now was a far cry from Bristol as it had been, back
in that other century when Hector was a boy and a young man. Progress had caught up with it; the automobile had run it down, and the saxophone moaned over the remains. Those four dominants rising out of the past — the trees, the war, the Negroes, the river — no longer cast their shadows across the present and were not included in any calculations for the future. Many of the trees had been felled to make way for widening the boulevards, and others were dying of thirst, choked by the concrete poured close about their trunks for the new sidewalks; the leafy tunnels were badly gapped, as if by shellfire, and dead leaves fell unseasonally. The veterans who turned out for parades and barbecues were only a handful now; blear-eyed, they went on canes, and none of them sucked in their stomachs now or skipped to keep step with the music; the battle names had been forgotten along with the cause for which they were fought, the fields themselves planted in cotton or run to weeds. The Negroes had worn out the gay-colored shirtwaists and swallowtail coats and did not replace them, for they were too poor; their faces no longer resembled masks, for they knew no secret; Haiti and John Brown had no connection with such as these. The river was not grand and glittery any more; the showboats were tinsel affairs, and the old luxury packets, the
Natchez
, the
Robert E. Lee
, the
Big Jim White
, were bleaching their ribs on mudflats all the way from Cairo to New Orleans, the pulsing throb and rumble of their whistles drowned by the piercing, one-note shriek of locomotives.

New dominants replaced them. The Opera House, which had boasted occasional traveling companies playing
Ben Hur
and the like, was the Bijou now, the first cinema palace in the delta; beneath the lancing beam of the projector the audience crouched in the gloom, serried like countrymen in the old dank multiholed privies, their upturned faces drinking the frictionless shadows of a nation’s desire, changing the shape of Woman to Mary Pickford and looking forward to Clara Bow and Garbo. An automobile, snarling and malodorous, was
no longer a curiosity on the sparrow-infested streets. The telephone, already common in houses not yet wired for electricity, had given every man an extra voice, squeaky and inflectionless like Punch infuriated, punctuated by wire-hum instead of smiles and nods, as he spoke into an oblong box screwed to the wall, filled with wire and buzzers and fronted by a tulip-like funnel on a stalk that cupped and threw his breath back in his face.

Such a list could grow and grow, but these were the dominants. These were the things which the preachers, high in their pulpits, railed and cajoled against, quoting the eschatology of Jeremiah and Isaiah and Jesus — to no effect: for the people sat in their Sunday clothes, soberly nodding agreement with all the preachers said about impending doom on earth and searing flame hereafter, and came out Monday morning as before; they gave the Lord His day, and kept the other six for their own uses. Yet they were new to these involvements. These devices that saved labor agitated their brains, and there was an increasing dichotomy between the Business life and the Christian life; they began to have nervous stomachs. There were nights when they tossed sleepless in their beds, counting the small hours by the courthouse clock, and suddenly, out of nowhere, dread was like a presence in the room; hell yawned and the trumpet was about to sound; cold sweat broke out on the palms of their hands and feet, and they knew fear.

The summer of 1910 was filled with such nights, the comet flaring like a rocket and a Negro beating a white man for a purse containing more money than most of them would ever see. All this and more went into making them ready and even anxious for some sort of personal, or at least local, outrage or affront; they were primed. So when they heard of Ella’s death, how she had been found asphyxiated in the hotel bed with the drummer in candy-striped drawers, their minds leaped at, fastened onto, and examined it inside-out. Women philosophized less than their husbands, being mainly concerned with the facts in the case, but men who had experienced her
early or late promiscuity found in her death an occasion for parading what they knew for the entertainment and envy of their friends, using her light moments as a basis for conjecture into profounder mysteries. Some who had never known her at all, or had known her only to nod to, adopted an air of reticence, implying that there was much they could tell if they had not scrupled to betray a confidence or show disrespect for the dead. Others downright lied, unable to resist this easy irrefutable chance to strut and posture. Those who had known the drummer, had bought his goods or shared a bottle with him, told what a ready eye he’d had for the girls. “A rounder,” they said, laughing, and added: “I hope when my time comes I go like that.”

Generally speaking, however, he was merely adjunctive, supplementary. It was Ella — and, by inference, the Sturgis family with her — who held the limelight. Hector was responsible, with Mrs Sturgis behind him. “If thats blue-blood,” the night clerk had said, “I’m glad I didnt have any to pass on to my kids. If a man wants his wife to stay home, he by God ought to nail her down. You see what I mean?” They saw; they followed all the clues and suggestions. For thirty-six hours the talk had been of little else — where she had been, whom she had been seen with, her partiality for traveling men — and when the thirty-six hours were up, they formed a parade out past the cemetery, just short of the lip of the grave.

What they saw, through the trailing screen of dust like smoke, was hardly worth the trip. Only five persons attended: Mrs Sturgis and Hector, Mr Clinkscales and Harry Barnes, and Mrs Lowry. The first four of these were ranged along one side of the grave, the minister at the head with the prayer book held so close to his face that his nose was almost between the pages; his eyes were failing though he was not yet ready to admit it. Mother and son were in the center, standing close. The undertaker was at the foot, not quite on line with the others since, as he said, he never presumed to push forward socially on a basis of professional advantage. Mrs Lowry
remained in the carriage because of her swollen legs. Her shoulders hunched, she wept into her handkerchief, producing a smothered, rhythmic moaning like a woman being tickled or drowned or maybe sawed in two. Anyone hearing her without knowing the occasion which brought forth these sounds would have thought she was being shaken by uncontrollable laughter: Ah, ah, ah,
ha!
The ha! that ended each series of ah’s was a sob of final exertion, like the ultimate gasp of a lifter of weights.

Mr Clinkscales read from the book: “Jesus saith to his disciples, Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”

Standing beside the grave Hector heard it all, the text along with the sobs from the nearby carriage — ah, ah, ah,
ha!
— but the former had no more meaning for him than the latter. The only safe and sensible thing in the world was his mother’s hand, which held firmly onto his wrist and gave it a squeeze or a comforting pat from time to time.

“In sure and certain hope,” Mr Clinkscales read, droning fervently.

The coffin sank on its patented rollers, going down into the earth while Mr Clinkscales prayed with his head tipped back, looking up into the sky. He was reciting poetry now, the rhymes coming through at regular intervals out of the surrounding words; death had no sting, the poem said, quoting Paul. After a silence broken only by the moans and sobs like Olympian laughter, Hector felt a tug at his sleeve. He had been feeling it for some time now, he realized, and when he looked up, Mrs Sturgis spoke to him again: “Come along, son.”

He got into the carriage, opposite the rector and beside his mother, who sat facing the weeping seamstress.

“The Lord giveth,” Mrs Lowry said between sobs. “The Lord taketh away.”

As the carriage passed beneath the gateway arch (H
OME OF
P
EACE
it spelled in wrought-iron letters) Hector turned, looking back, and saw two Negroes in overalls come from behind the hearse where they had been hidden during the service. Under the direction of Mr Barnes they removed the bright green mats of artificial grass from the raw mound and began to throw pale yellow dirt into the grave. Their shovels, polished silvery by digging, flashed in the sunlight, but distance and the sound of the tires on gravel drowned the hollow clatter of clods on the lid of the coffin; Hector heard them only in his mind.

“The Lord giveth,” Mrs Lowry said.

She wept more quietly now, as if the final fact of death, not as one stunning blow but as a presence that would be with her all the balance of her life, had reached her at last with its strange comfort. Presently she dried her eyes, using one corner of a silk dance handkerchief a little less than half the size of a bedspread, and sat watching the houses flow past. For a time she said nothing. She sat watching. Then suddenly: “My,
my
,” she said, her voice sounding quite loud after the silence, “so many
new
ones. Bristol certainly has grown!”

It was the first time she had left her room since the flood of 1903. Her legs bulged beneath her skirts and petticoats. Her eyes, pale green under lids inflamed from weeping, blinked weakly in the unaccustomed sunlight, and her flesh had the bluish tinge of soured milk. “Who lives there?” she asked from time to time, pointing with the hand that held the handkerchief so that it fluttered like a banner on a rampart. She had begun to sweat and the secret, unwashed parts of her body gave off a rancid odor, faintly ammoniac. The bruise-colored circles under her eyes came almost to her cheekbones.

They had fallen into the passing column, the parade of Bristolians who had foregone the actual funeral, the graveside service, but who could not forego having at least what they called a look-see. It wound from somewhere south of the cemetery, northward into the heart of town, inescapable and avid. The people in the surrey just ahead turned their upper
bodies with sudden birdlike movements, darting glances, and from time to time one of the vehicles toward the rear would pull out of line to catch a glimpse of the Sturgis carriage. An automobile, whose driver was more adventurous than the rest, clattered past with a sound like pieces of scrap iron being shaken in a wooden tub, and though its occupants sat with their bodies held severely to the front, like cannoneers on dress parade, they twisted their heads slightly to the right as they came past, examining the quartet of mourners out of the corners of their eyes.

Mrs Lowry wore a black taffeta tea gown, stylishly cut, which a client had never called for. She told them about that, Mr Clinkscales and Mrs Sturgis and Hector, as well as the coachman high on the box. The latter did not look back; he sat as stiff as a department store dummy, and the others were frozen in various attitudes, surprised by her sudden volubility. They avoided her eyes, which flicked from one to another while she spoke.

“It was for Mrs Crenshaw, a dear lady; I think I might even say friend. She was looking forward to wearing it for her daughter’s coming out. God rest her soul, she passed away the night I got it finished. You remember: it was awful sudden. She’d been in the best of health right up to the day. At least we thought so. Apoplexy took her and we never even knew she had it; she never looked the least bit apoplectic, to my mind. Well, I sent word to Mr Crenshaw it was ready, in case he wanted it for her for the occasion. She’d have liked that, being buried in it I mean, after all the pains she took getting the pattern and having it fitted and all. But he never answered, then or later. You know how it is at times like that: I suppose he had enough on his mind, poor man. Dont you?”

‘My God,’ Hector thought. ‘My God, my God, my God.’

Then, without waiting for an answer and without even any change of tone (the transition was clear in her own mind, if not in anyone else’s; she had mentioned Mrs Crenshaw’s
daughter and Mrs Crenshaw’s death) Mrs Lowry said abruptly, “People said things about her I wont repeat, but they didn’t know. What did they know? They made them up because of their idle minds. Elly was a good girl, good as gold. Who could know better than me? Why, I could tell you things she done for me.…”

She paused and dabbed at her eyes with one corner of the big plum-colored handkerchief, beginning to weep again. It was a bright clear day, very hot and still, the leaves hanging motionless, the sky intensely blue, almost to cobalt, not at all in keeping with the scene now being staged in the carriage. For a moment Hector had hopes that she would not be able to continue, but she recovered her voice soon afterwards.

“When Mr Lowry went away, ran off that is, and I begun taking in sewing, little odd jobs, piecework in the beginning, never any too sure where my next fifty cents was coming from, she used to say: ‘I know what youre doing for me, mamma.
I
wont forget.’ Mind you, she was just a little girl. (Wait.” Mrs Lowry counted on her fingers, and then for some reason pointed one of them at Mrs Sturgis like a pistol. “She was barely six.) And then some nights when my poor legs were aching me too bad for me to use, she’d get down on her hands and knees under the machine and pump the pedal, going even and smooth with hardly a breathing-space until I’d make her stop and rest a spell. Nobody knows what a comfort she was to me in my misery. Lord love us, nobody
knows
!”

She threw back her head and roared this last, and the moans and strangulating sobs resumed: Ah, ah, ah,
ha!
Ah, ah, ah,
ha!
while the remaining three people in the carriage avoided not only Mrs Lowry’s eyes but, now, each other’s as well, seeking to occupy themselves, in the presence of a common embarrassment, with various trivialities apart from the action at hand. Mrs Sturgis smoothed her skirt, watching the cloth ripple under her fingers and the glitter of her rings against the black. Mr Clinkscales took out his watch, a big one, turnip-sized in a hunting case, which he always laid face-up on the lectern at
the beginning of every sermon; he joggled it now on the flat of his palm, raising and lowering it as if trying to estimate its weight for the first time in all the years he’d worn it, as intent as if he were absorbed in solving the riddle of Time. Hector was the only one who apparently did not feel obliged to occupy himself in some such manner. He kept his head down, hoping that now at last Mrs Lowry would be unable to continue.