Raintree County (48 page)

—What about it, Jeemie? Susanna said to the doll. Shall we marry this gentleman? He's a very lovely young man, and I love him very much, Jeemie. I love him much, much, much more than any of the rest. What do you think, Jeemie?

She looked inquiringly at the firepuffed face on the pillow which in the darkness looked like a little Negro's.

—What does he say? Johnny said, grinning in spite of himself.

—We accept, Susanna said.

Her large lovely eyes were suddenly filled with tears. She squeezed Johnny's hand and let her free arm bend loosely over his neck so that the open hand swung back and forth languidly at his throat. It was surprising how heavy this hand was, pulling his head down toward hers. Her deep lips pouted and parted under his. She was shuddering with sobs.

—O, Johnny, she said, I
do
love you so much.

—And I love you too, Johnny said, thinking that perhaps after all he did love this strange, passionate, wistful, wandering child who had come back to him from the Deep South.

But his position was an awkward one, as he still sat on the bed with his head bent all the way down.

—Here, get in with us, Susanna said, and lying on her side, with a quick motion she flipped the sheet back.

She was completely naked. She touched her hand delicately to the everpresent scarlet scar that burned cruelly into the beginnings of the left breast, which—downtilted, tipped with rose—swung softly from the motion of her shoulders.

Confused, Johnny accidentally put his hand on the burnt doll. He picked it up.

Susanna stopped sobbing and watched intently. Johnny carefully put the doll at the top of the pillow. Susanna looked at him and then looked at the doll, sitting stiffly at the top of the pillow.

—There now, Jeemie, how's that? Johnny said. You can see everything from there.

Susanna smiled sweetly and sank back on the pillow.

—I'm glad the family likes me, Johnny said, feeling as though he had successfully passed an examination of some kind.

—We
love
you, Johnny, Susanna said.

And with her catlike strength she pulled him violently down upon her, where he lay fully dressed in a tweed suit, stiff collar, and shiny knobtoed shoes. Disturbed, the doll population shook on their hooks and nodded vigorously and in unison from their perches on the head and footboards. One fell down and sat astraddle Johnny's neck. The big one at the foot of the bed bent over and tackled him heavily on the calves. Another fell with a faint squeak on the small of his back. For a moment, he felt as though he was being attacked by hideous dwarfs, while his face was only three inches away from the dreadful, seared face of the doll Jeemie.

Suddenly, Susanna began to laugh, and Johnny laughed too, as it was all rather absurd and delightful. Susanna laughed with little high shrieks and sobs, and while she laughed her sinewy arms and legs seemed to envelop him in a net of nudity. She laughed and laughed, and the doll heads laughed too, all gently nodding in happy unison.

That was how Johnny Shawnessy had proposed marriage to Susanna Drake, and that was how his proposal had been accepted.

The day following this adventure with a sick girl and a hundred and sixteen dolls, Johnny had his approaching marriage announced in the newspapers. When he dropped in at the
Clarion
office, Garwood Jones, who had become the editor-in-chief a few weeks before, was busy filling the copy hook.

—Hi, sprout, he said, when Johnny showed up.

Garwood kept on writing. He was in shirt sleeves and bowtie, and his lush dark hair was attractively mussed. His big mobile, sensual mouth pursed at the pencil as he studied for the next word.

—I'm getting married, Garwood, Johnny said casually. Here's an item on it.

Garwood didn't bother to look up.

—Go away and be funny somewhere else, he said. I'm busy as hell.

—I really am, Johnny said. And I expect a little better treatment than this from my in-laws.

—Huh? Garwood said. All right. You're getting married. Who is it?

—This will give you all the needful information, Uncle, Johnny said, dropping the item on Garwood's desk.

—Well, I'll be goddamned! Garwood said, as Johnny went out of the door. Susanna!

In the newspapers, the announcement sounded very official and correct. The
Clarion
in particular laid itself out to do the thing right.

APPROACHING NUPTIALS ANNOUNCED

The long and happy engagement of Mr. John Wickliff Shawnessy and Miss Susanna Drake will soon be consummated in marital union, the prospective groom disclosed today. This festive event, toward which the friends and relatives of the blissful pair have long been looking with keen anticipation, has been set for December 2 and at the bride's request will be held at the Danwebster Methodist Church, with the groom's father, the Reverend T. D. Shawnessy, presiding. Among the many unusual and romantic features of this genuine love-match is the fact that the bride is a former resident of the Sunny South. Her frequent visits to friends in Freehaven began the friendship which soon ripened into reciprocal esteem and at last achieved the full flower of mutual love. The groom, a young newspaperman and writer of promise, is well-known throughout Raintree County as the author of . . .

A good deal of mischief was circulated at Johnny's expense by his male friends, but the female contingent of his own family bravely conducted a series of parties at which the bride and groom appeared sometimes singly, sometimes together.

The most embarrassing moment in all the hectic days before the marriage, came when Johnny presented Susanna to his parents. At the appointed time, he brought her from town and ushered her into the front parlor of the Home Place, which was always kept cool and
closed, with the shades drawn except for special visits. Ellen Shawnessy had on a new dress, and T. D. was togged out in his one good suit. Susanna had been very nervous on the way over, but when she came in she was all grace and loveliness. Her manner toward Johnny's mother was a mixture of girlish humility and ladylike reserve. Johnny could tell that Ellen was pleased, and as for T. D. he rocked violently on his heels, yawned, blinked, smiled, bowed, and chuckled with satisfaction. Susanna insisted upon hearing him recite the famous ‘Ode on the Evils of Tobacco' and listened attentively without a single trace of amusement even on the two celebrated lines:

Some do it chew and some it smoke
Whilst some it up their nose do poke.

She talked with Ellen very diligently about the preparation of certain Southern dishes, admired her dress, which was too large for her bony little figure, and remarked that she saw now where Johnny got his beautiful smile and hair. She also met some of Johnny's brothers and sisters and was very sweet to them all. There wasn't a single slip on anyone's part, except that Zeke whistled when he first saw Susanna. It was a wonderful performance, and Johnny was as grateful and proud as under the circumstances it was possible for him to be.

After it was over and Johnny was taking Susanna home, she said,

—I just
love
your folks, Johnny. They're awfully sweet. I see now why you're the way you are. Johnny——

She had said the name suddenly and plaintively.

—Yes.

—I want to tell you something.

—Yes.

—I'm not going to have a child after all.

—O.

—I lied about it, Susanna said, dropping her eyes and nervously smoothing her left coat lapel.

—What for?

But he was so immensely relieved that he couldn't feel angry at the imposture.

—Because I wanted you more than anything I can remember since I was a little girl.

As far as Johnny was concerned, this was the perfect excuse. The admission proved one thing conclusively—that for some reason Susanna Drake was really in love with him. Now, suddenly, he felt very cheerful and innocent, as if, after all, everything had been scrupulously correct from the start.

—Tell me something, Susanna. With your money and looks, you could have married a lot of different men. Why did you want me?

—I never cared much for the men I met before, except in a passing sort of way. But the minute I laid eyes on you, I fell in love.

—Why? What was it?

—O, I couldn't explain it to you, she said, smoothing and smoothing her left coat lapel. Any woman would know.

She turned and touched his cheek near the mouth with her right hand and looked intently at his face with the wistfully childlike look of her photographs.

—But you'd look better with beard and mustaches, Johnny, she said. More manly.

In the days preceding the marriage, Ellen Shawnessy threw all her energy into preparations for the event, and in general Raintree County rose heroically to the task of making everything conform to its ancient canons of respectability. There was a great deal to do. Everything was complicated by Susanna's decision that she wanted to go away immediately after the marriage ceremony. The happy pair were to catch the train at Freehaven and follow a tight schedule which would bring them by nightfall to the city of Louisville, Kentucky, on the other side of the Ohio River from Indiana. This was to be the start of a long honeymoon in the South. The loving pair were going to go by steamboat down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and from there to New Orleans, where Johnny would have a chance to meet Susanna's relatives. It all sounded lustrous and magnificent and helped give a respectable air to the whole undertaking. In fact, all of Johnny's friends began to consider his precipitate marriage a step up in life for him. He had married money, beauty, and culture. Raintree County's fairhaired boy was making good after all.

There were some clouds, of course. Another letter from the Perfessor failed to sound very exultant. One part of it in especial disturbed Johnny.

As for a dark suspicion you say I mentioned in my last letter, I can't even remember what it was, so it must not have been very important. Forget it, my boy, and be happy. You have a beautiful girl who loves you and whom you love. By all means, my boy, marry her, love her, beget broods of happy cherubim, go on, my boy, to greater and better things. . . .

This stereotype sounded vaguely familiar and thoroughly insincere to Johnny, and besides it was out of tune with the rest of the letter, which made merry at the expense of the sacred human institution of marriage.

As for the evasive remark concerning a dark suspicion, Johnny was perfectly well aware that Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles never forgot anything.

The worst thing about it all was that Johnny hadn't stopped loving Nell Gaither. Everything he had done with Susanna and even Susanna's beauty had merely inflamed the passion that he had for his own privately created Venus with the Raintree County face. In a way he felt that he had not been unfaithful to her. What had happened to him had been a strange accident of fate, caused by occult events and surroundings.

In that wild taking in deep grass under the tree, where the sun fell steeply slanting on two stones, and the leaves had dropped a thin brightness like sifted sunshine, and the tree had swayed, a slender and great reed, and he had seen not very far away the river where it was hardly to be told from the lake (or the lake where it was hardly to be told from the river—green waters swollen with beautiful lifeforms), then he had known that the secret of Raintree County was indeed a secret of water and earth and tree, stone, and the living golden seed, and he had known too that it was a shared secret and could only be carried in the vessel of a woman's body, and he knew also that it must be brought from afar and bear a rhythmical (though, for the moment, a forgotten) name and that she who brought it must be likewise a creature of the river, though whether her hair was black or brown or golden did not greatly matter, and he had known too that she must bear upon her body a secret imperfection and he had known too, even in that savagely sweet moment, he had known already by anticipation that to learn the secret was also to learn duty and hot tears.

As he rode home in the night to the Home Place after the bachelor
party, that secret plagued him with a delicious sorrow. The secret of human love and desire was to discover something that was at once universal and particular—beauty and a person. At Lake Paradise, he had been lost in the universal. It was only later that he realized that all life is personal beyond escape.

Ever since the Fourth of July outing, he had avoided seeing Nell and had allowed her note of reconciliation to go unanswered. Of course, it had been necessary to go to church, where she appeared without fail, imperially calm as usual. When he reminded himself that this person had once been naked in his arms and that her flowerlike mouth had clung to his in long, long kisses, he was sick with love.

It was not mere longing of the flesh; it was a total longing to possess someone. To him, Nell Gaither was an entire republic of beauty and nostalgic memory, which now he had to relinquish.

When he reached the Home Place, it was after midnight, and everyone else had gone to bed. He went to his room and undressed in the dark. When he pulled back the covers and lay down, his face touched something pinned to his pillow. It had been concealed under the cover. He lit a lamp and unpinned an envelope addressed, ‘To Johnny.' Inside was a piece of letterpaper beautifully inscribed with a message:

One for whom you once professed affection would esteem it a generous action on your part, though undeserved on hers, if you would see her once again before you leave the County. She will be waiting near a certain spot sanctified to the memory of a profane but sweet encounter. Let your heart and the memory of a blissful hour (perilous, yes, but alas! all the more precious in recollection to one at least who shared its raptures) tell you the name of her who penned these lines.

He reread the note several times, savoring its stylistic beauties, which were as good as a signature. Probably one of his sisters (who were not very happy about the coming marriage) had connived in placing it on his pillow.