Shiloh and Other Stories (23 page)

Waldeen is startled by the conversation. She is rattling ice cubes, looking for glasses. She finds an opened Coke in the refrigerator, but it may have lost its fizz. Before she can decide whether to open the new one Joe brought, C. W. and Betty grab glasses of ice from her and hold them out. Waldeen pours the Coke. There is a little fizz.

“We went first class the whole way,” says C. W. “I always say, what’s a vacation for if you don’t splurge?”

“We spent a fortune,” says Betty. “Plus, I gained a ton.”

“Man, those big jets are really nice,” says C. W.

C. W. and Betty seem changed, exactly like all the people Waldeen has known who come back from Florida with tales of adventure and glowing tans, except that C. W. and Betty did not
get tans. It rained. Waldeen cannot imagine flying, or spending that much money. Her ex-husband tried to get her to go up in an airplane with him once—a seven-fifty ride in a Cessna—but she refused. If Holly goes to Arizona to visit him, she will have to fly. Arizona is probably as far away as Florida.

When C. W. says he is going fishing on Saturday, Holly demands to go along. Waldeen reminds her about the picnic. “You’re full of wants,” she says.

“I just wanted to go somewhere.”

“I’ll take you fishing one of these days soon,” says Joe.

“Joe’s got to clean off his graveyard,” says Waldeen. Before she realizes what she is saying, she has invited C. W. and Betty to come along on the picnic. She turns to Joe. “Is that O.K.?”

“I’ll bring some beer,” says C. W. “To hell with fishing.”

“I never heard of a picnic at a graveyard,” says Betty. “But it sounds neat.”

Joe seems embarrassed. “I’ll put you to work,” he warns.

Later, in the kitchen, Waldeen pours more Coke for Betty. Holly is playing solitaire on the kitchen table. As Betty takes the Coke, she says, “Let C. W. take Holly fishing if he wants a kid so bad.” She has told Waldeen that she wants to marry C. W., but she does not want to ruin her figure by getting pregnant. Betty pets the cat. “Is this cat going to have kittens?”

Mr. Spock, sitting with his legs tucked under his stomach, is shaped somewhat like a turtle.

“Heavens, no,” says Waldeen. “He’s just fat because I had him nurtured.”

“The word is
neutered
!” cries Holly, jumping up. She grabs Mr. Spock and marches up the stairs.

“That youngun,” Waldeen says. She feels suddenly afraid. Once, Holly’s father, unemployed and drunk on tequila, snatched Holly from the school playground and took her on a wild ride around town, buying her ice cream at the Tastee-Freez, and stopping at Newberry’s to buy her an
All in the Family
Joey doll, with correct private parts. Holly was eight. When Joe brought her home, both were tearful and quiet. The excitement had worn off, but Waldeen had vividly imagined how it was. She wouldn’t be surprised if Joe tried the same trick again, this time
carrying Holly off to Arizona. She has heard of divorced parents who kidnap their own children.

—

The next day Joe McClain brings a pizza at noon. He is working nearby and has a chance to eat lunch with Waldeen. The pizza is large enough for four people. Waldeen is not hungry.

“I’m afraid we’ll end up horsing around and won’t get the graveyard cleaned off,” Joe says. “It’s really a lot of work.”

“Why’s it so important, anyway?”

“It’s a family thing.”

“Family. Ha!”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what’s what anymore,” Waldeen wails. “I’ve got this kid that wants to live on peanuts and sleeps with a cat—and didn’t even see her daddy at Christmas. And here
you
are, talking about family. What do you know about family? You don’t know the half of it.”

“What’s got into you lately?”

Waldeen tries to explain. “Take Colonel Sanders, for instance. He was on
I’ve Got a Secret
once, years ago, when nobody knew who he was? His secret was that he had a million-dollar check in his pocket for selling Kentucky Fried Chicken to John Y. Brown.
Now
look what’s happened. Colonel Sanders sold it but didn’t get rid of it. He couldn’t escape from being Colonel Sanders. John Y. sold it too, and he can’t get rid of it either. Everybody calls him the Chicken King, even though he’s governor. That’s not very dignified, if you ask me.”

“What in Sam Hill are you talking about? What’s that got to do with families?”

“Oh, Colonel Sanders just came to mind because C. W. and Betty saw him. What I mean is, you can’t just do something by itself. Everything else drags along. It’s all
involved. I
can’t get rid of my ex-husband just by signing a paper. Even if he
is
in Arizona and I never lay eyes on him again.”

Joe stands up, takes Waldeen by the hand, and leads her to the couch. They sit down and he holds her tightly for a moment. Waldeen has the strange impression that Joe is an old friend who moved away and returned, years later, radically changed. She
doesn’t understand the walking sticks, or why he would buy such an enormous pizza.

“One of these days you’ll see,” says Joe, kissing her.

“See what?” Waldeen mumbles.

“One of these days you’ll see—I’m not such a bad catch.”

Waldeen stares at a split in the wallpaper.

“Who would cut your hair if it wasn’t for me?” he asks, rumpling her curls. “I should have gone to beauty school.”

“I don’t know.”

“Nobody else can do Jimmy Durante imitations like I can.”

“I wouldn’t brag about it.”

—

On Saturday, Waldeen is still in bed when Joe arrives. He appears in the doorway of her bedroom, brandishing a shiny black walking stick. It looks like a stiffened black racer snake.

“I overslept,” Waldeen says, rubbing her eyes. “First I had insomnia. Then I had bad dreams. Then—”

“You said you’d make a picnic.”

“Just a minute. I’ll go make it.”

“There’s not time now. We’ve got to pick up C. W. and Betty.”

Waldeen pulls on her jeans and a shirt, then runs a brush through her hair. In the mirror she sees blue pouches under her eyes. She catches sight of Joe in the mirror. He looks like an actor in a vaudeville show.

They go into the kitchen, where Holly is eating granola. “She promised me she’d make carrot cake,” Holly tells Joe.

“I get blamed for everything,” says Waldeen. She is rushing around, not sure why. She is hardly awake.

“How could you forget?” asks Joe. “It was your idea in the first place.”

“I didn’t forget. I just overslept.” Waldeen opens the refrigerator. She is looking for something. She stares at a ham.

When Holly leaves the kitchen, Waldeen asks Joe, “Are you mad at me?” Joe is thumping his stick on the floor.

“No. I just want to get this show on the road.”

“My ex-husband always said I was never dependable, and he was right. But
he
was one to talk! He had his head in the clouds.”

“Forget your ex-husband.”

“His name is Joe. Do you want some fruit juice?” Waldeen is looking for orange juice, but she cannot find it.

“No.” Joe leans on his stick. “He’s over and done with. Why don’t you just cross him off your list?”

“Why do you think I had bad dreams? Answer me that. I must be afraid of something.”

There is no orange juice. Waldeen closes the refrigerator door. Joe is smiling at her enigmatically. What she is really afraid of, she realizes, is that he will turn out to be just like Joe Murdock. But it must be only the names, she reminds herself. She hates the thought of a string of husbands, and the idea of a stepfather is like a substitute host on a talk show. It makes her think of Johnny Carson’s many substitute hosts.

“You’re just afraid to do anything new, Waldeen,” Joe says. “You’re afraid to cross the street. Why don’t you get your ears pierced? Why don’t you adopt a refugee? Why don’t you get a dog?”

“You’re crazy. You say the weirdest things.” Waldeen searches the refrigerator again. She pours a glass of Coke and watches it foam.

—

It is afternoon before they reach the graveyard. They had to wait for C. W. to finish painting his garage door, and Betty was in the shower. On the way, they bought a bucket of fried chicken. Joe said little on the drive into the country. When he gets quiet, Waldeen can never figure out if he is angry or calm. When he put the beer cooler in the trunk, she caught a glimpse of the geraniums in an ornate concrete pot with a handle. It looked like a petrified Easter basket. On the drive, she closed her eyes and imagined that they were in a funeral procession.

The graveyard is next to the woods on a small rise fenced in with barbed wire. A herd of Holsteins grazes in the pasture nearby, and in the distance the smokestacks of the new industrial park send up lazy swirls of smoke. Waldeen spreads out a blanket, and Betty opens beers and hands them around. Holly sits under a tree, her back to the gravestones, and opens a Vicki Barr flight stewardess novel.

Joe won’t sit down to eat until he has unloaded the geraniums.
He fusses over the heavy basket, trying to find a level spot. The flowers are not yet blooming.

“Wouldn’t plastic flowers keep better?” asks Waldeen. “Then you wouldn’t have to lug that thing back and forth.” There are several bunches of plastic flowers on the graves. Most of them have fallen out of their containers.

“Plastic, yuck!” cries Holly.

“I should have known I’d say the wrong thing,” says Waldeen.

“My grandmother liked geraniums,” Joe says.

At the picnic, Holly eats only slaw and the crust from a drumstick. Waldeen remarks, “Mr. Spock is going to have a feast.”

“You’ve got a treasure, Waldeen,” says C. W. “Most kids just want to load up on junk.”

“Wonder how long a person can survive without meat,” says Waldeen, somewhat breezily. But she suddenly feels miserable about the way she treats Holly. Everything Waldeen does is so roundabout, so devious. Disgusted, Waldeen flings a chicken bone out among the graves. Once, her ex-husband wouldn’t bury the dog that was hit by a car. It lay in a ditch for over a week. She remembers Joe saying several times, “Wonder if the dog is still there.” He wouldn’t admit that he didn’t want to bury it. Waldeen wouldn’t do it because he had said he would do it. It was a war of nerves. She finally called the Highway Department to pick it up. Joe McClain, she thinks now, would never be that barbaric.

Joe pats Holly on the head and says, “My girl’s stubborn, but she knows what she likes.” He makes a Jimmy Durante face, which causes Holly to smile. Then he brings out a surprise for her, a bag of trail mix, which includes pecans and raisins. When Holly pounces on it, Waldeen notices that Holly is not wearing the Indian bracelet her father gave her. Waldeen wonders if there are vegetarians in Arizona.

—

Blue sky burns through the intricate spring leaves of the maples on the fence line. The light glances off the gravestones—a few thin slabs that date back to the last century and eleven sturdy blocks of marble and granite. Joe’s grandmother’s grave is a brown heap.

Waldeen opens another beer. She and Betty are stretched out under a maple tree and Holly is reading. Betty is talking idly about the diet she intends to go on. Waldeen feels too lazy to move. She watches the men work. While C. W. rakes leaves, Joe washes off the gravestones with water he brought in a plastic jug. He scrubs out the carvings with a brush. He seems as devoted as a man washing and polishing his car on a Saturday afternoon. Betty plays he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not with the fingers of a maple leaf. The fragments fly away in a soft breeze.

From her Sea World tote bag, Betty pulls out playing cards with Holly Hobbie pictures on them. The old-fashioned child with the bonnet hiding her face is just the opposite of Waldeen’s own strange daughter. Waldeen sees Holly watching the men. They pick up their beer cans from a pink, shiny tombstone and drink a toast to Joe’s great-great-grandfather, Joseph McClain, who was killed in the Civil War. His stone, almost hidden in dead grasses, says 1841–1862.

“When I die, they can burn me and dump the ashes in the lake,” says C. W.

“Not me,” says Joe. “I want to be buried right here.”

“
Want
to be? You planning to die soon?”

Joe laughs. “No, but if it’s my time, then it’s my time. I wouldn’t be afraid to go.”

“I guess that’s the right way to look at it.”

Betty says to Waldeen, “He’d marry me if I’d have his kid.”

“What made you decide you don’t want a kid, anyhow?” Waldeen is shuffling the cards, fifty-two identical children in bonnets.

“Who says I decided? You just do whatever comes natural. Whatever’s right for you.” Betty drinks from her can of beer.

“Most people do just the opposite,” Waldeen says. “They have kids without thinking.”

“Talk about decisions,” Betty goes on, “did you see
Sixty Minutes
when they were telling about Palm Springs? And how all those rich people live? One woman had hundreds of dresses, and Morley Safer was asking her how she ever decided what on earth to wear. He was
strolling
through her closet. He could have played
golf
in her closet.”

“Rich people don’t know beans,” says Waldeen. She drinks some beer, then deals out the cards for a game of hearts. Betty snatches each card eagerly. Waldeen does not look at her own cards right away. In the pasture, the cows are beginning to move. The sky is losing its blue. Holly seems lost in her book, and the men are laughing. C. W. stumbles over a footstone hidden in the grass and falls onto a grave. He rolls over, curled up with laughter.

“Y’all are going to kill yourselves,” Waldeen says, calling across the graveyard.

Joe tells C. W. to shape up. “We’ve got work to do,” he says.

Joe looks over at Waldeen and mouths something. “I love you”? She suddenly remembers a Ku Klux Klansman she saw on TV. He was being arrested at a demonstration, and as he was led away in handcuffs, he spoke to someone off-camera, ending with a solemn message, “I love you.” He was acting for the camera, as if to say, “Look what a nice guy I am.” He gave Waldeen the creeps. That could have been Joe Murdock, Waldeen thinks. Not Joe McClain. Maybe she is beginning to get them straight in her mind. They have different ways of trying to get through to her.