Walking Across Egypt (10 page)

She would have to look into some way of doing something for Wesley. There was so much promise in his kin, his uncle, Lamar. He had a good heart. She could tell. He had a straightforwardness to him. He didn't shirk around in the shadows like so many young people nowadays. He'd speak to a person. So many young people at church wouldn't speak. Their parents didn't make them—didn't seem to care whether they spoke to old people or not. She'd elbow them, and make them speak, by golly.

When Lamar stopped wearing that hat inside, decided to polish his shoes and get some crease in his pants he could be downright pleasant to be around.

When the class was over and the closing prayer finished, Carrie said, "Mattie, I want to hear about you falling through your rocking chair."

"Good gracious," said Mattie. "It won't nothing. I just fell through." She decided to show them the bruises on the backs of her legs. "Close that door," she said. Beatrice closed the door. "Look a-here," she said. She raised her dress and turned around so they could all see.

"Lord have mercy, Mattie."

"Good gracious in the morning."

"I'll swanee, Mattie."

Mattie liked that about herself: how she'd go ahead and do little things the others wouldn't do—like raise her dress to show off a bruise, and she could sense that people liked that about her, counted on her for it. "Yes," she said, "it was just awful, and funny in a way."

Mattie walked alone to the church sanctuary, shouldered against several young people to get them to speak to her. She knew that courteousness had started on the way out with television and integration and a man on the moon. She wished somebody would put their finger exactly on the connections so something could be done about it. And she knew the weather had been affected by those people landing on the moon. No question about it. It was all mixed in with reasons for the great decline of courtesy. In some ways she was glad it was now that she was slowing down and not forty years from now, having had to live through the decline of everything good.

She walked into the sanctuary, down the aisle, toward her seat, left side, halfway. Carrie would be along in a minute to sit with her. She moved into the middle and sat down. Some people would sit on the end of an empty pew and then everybody had to crawl over them. And those young people in the back were so noisy these days. Three Sundays ago, before the service started, she had gotten up, walked back there, and told them if they couldn't be quieter to go outside. They got quiet, too. If the Lord's house got to be not sacred then there could be no place that was sacred, no place on earth for the rest of the earth to compare itself to.

The sanctuary began to fill up. Buck Bosser and Phil Gates walked in along the empty pew behind her, bent over and asked her about getting stuck in the rocking chair. She laughed quietly, turned to look up at them. They moved on. Why did she even think about keeping it a secret anyway? It was fun. Phil had said he wanted to hear all about it after the service. He would be standing in his place outside after the service. He and Buck and Buck's wife, what's her name, there by the pole supporting the rain shelter leading to the education building. Mae and George would be over by the other pole. She would tell them all, and have a good time doing it.

The choir members filed in, one by one in their robes. She'd stopped singing in the choir when she realized for sure that she was slowing down. She'd sung there for over thirty years and had listened to some folks stay far beyond their prime. Mrs. Brown, bless her heart, had stayed until she squeaked and went flat. And she, Mattie, had begun to feel the pressure of the performances; it got so it took her longer to learn her part. She had sense enough to step down. Nobody begged her to stay either, but that was all right.

And there singing alto on the front row, Marie Lloyd with all that makeup. If Marie only knew how much better she looked without it. Mattie was almost glad she couldn't see that far anymore. She would never forget the Christmas Marie was sick and the choir went Christmas caroling and went out of their way to go by Marie's house. Marie was inside in the living room, on the couch, watching television. Bill told them to come on in; they did, and there Marie was sitting on the couch in her bathrobe without any makeup. Mattie marveled over how much better she looked sick, without makeup, than she did well and with makeup. She had such good features.

It was time for the scripture. Mattie read along. It was the time people needed to be most quiet, but some of the young people didn't pay any attention at all to what was going on. Some of the adults didn't. That Denise Singletary was as likely to be coming in as going out with that brat of a little boy she had no idea how to manage. Always sitting down there at the front. That child climbing up, looking back, making faces and noises, Denise sitting there as if he didn't exist and then when it was far too late, bending over and saying something to the child which the child ignored, of course—it won't the child's fault—and then saying something again, and then when the whole church was looking, disturbed and missing whatever was going on, she would walk out holding the little crying screaming thing on her shoulder. The child was cute on those rare occasions he behaved—he had potential.

That afternoon, Wesley Benfield, stringy blond hair down his neck and over his ears, a few tufts of hair here and there on his face, including the beginnings of a blond mustache, sat on a bench at a picnic table looking through red-rimmed eyes across the Young Men's Rehabilitation Center yard at the fence. What a goddamned joke this whole place was. He hooked his one long fingernail—the little one on his right hand—under a splinter on the table, pulled it up. The splinter cracked from the table as it widened, more and more wood coming up. He could make a weapon if it kept coming up. It was pointed. He looked around. He carefully raised the piece of wood. Pop, it broke from the table. Not enough for a weapon. He'd like to take that picnic table apart piece by piece. He'd like to take the whole goddamned institution apart piece by piece.

His eyes moved along the fence. He shook the hair back out of his eyes. Every day he looked for a hole in the fence, a ruptured link, a break, a slight opening of some sort, something nobody else would notice. No luck.

He wanted a cigarette so bad he didn't know what to do.

If he could find a hole, an opening, he'd be out of that place as fast as—he looked around, then spoke to himself: "I'd be out of here as fast as a greasy string through a duck's ass." He scratched the back of his leg.

He noticed Norman, the guard, at the gate, checking in some old woman.

He sucked air in through his teeth, inhaled it, pretending he was smoking. Lamar had said he would bring him a carton of Salems. Wesley smoked Salems because John Prine had a pack of them along with a glass of water sitting on a stool on stage at a concert one time. Wesley had been on the front row watching, and ever since then he'd smoked Salems. Prine was cool. Wesley had tried to sing some of his songs. Learned a few chords on a guitar. Wrote a few songs himself, the words anyway. Good songs. Lamar had said he was going to bring him a John Prine tape with "Spanish Pipedream" and "Please Don't Bury Me" on it, but he hadn't. Where the hell was Lamar anyway? He should have been there already.

The old woman was talking to Norman. Norman was pointing ... at him, it looked like. Wesley looked over his shoulder and saw Benny and Gerald over by the wall. Norman must be pointing at them. For sure it won't him. He didn't know no goddamned old woman.

Mattie looked at the young man sitting alone at the picnic table. He was wearing a blue shirt—like the others were wearing.

The guard held the gate open and Mattie walked through it and toward the young man. There's nothing to be afraid of, she thought. All these families are out here, scattered around.

She's headed at me, thought Wesley. He looked over his shoulder again. She's got to be coming to one of them guys. I ain't done nothing to her.

He don't look like Jesus, thought Mattie.

I'm getting the hell out of here, thought Wesley. She was headed right at him. Headed right between his eyes, carrying a covered tin pan and a paper sack.

He stood, lifted his foot over his seat and onto the ground, looked around at Benny and Gerald, back at the old woman, who had stopped right there at his table.

"Wesley?" she said.

He froze. Seemed like she was saying that like she had brought something for him—that in the pan. He started his foot back, rested it on the seat. "You got a cigarette?" he said.

"A cigarette?"

"Yeah."

She set the pan on the table. "No I don't have no cigarette. You don't need one either."

"What's in there?"

"A piece of cake, piece of pie."

"Who's it for?"

"You're Wesley, ain't you?"

"Yeah, I'm Wesley." He sat, slowly. What the hell was going on? What kind of goddamn trick was this. Somebody out to poison his ass?

"I brought you a little something. I'm Mattie Rigsbee." He's not a bad-looking boy at all. A little wrung out maybe. "I can tell you smoke by your color."

"Well, good for you." Wesley eyed the paper bag. "I don't smoke now. I ain't got no cigarettes. Ain't had none for two days."

"You stop smoking and your color will improve."

"Who gives a shit whether my color improves."

Mattie stared at him. "I do. And listen, son, you shouldn't ever talk that way around a lady."

Wesley's head fell forward slightly while he stared into Mattie's eyes; he suddenly laughed, looking away, staring far away out over the green trees, covering his mouth with his hand while he laughed, then looked back at Mattie as it hit him. He stopped laughing. "Are you my grandma?"

Bad teeth, thought Mattie. "No, I'm not."

She might be lying, thought Wesley. "My grandma's alive somewhere. One of them, I know." He looked around to see who was looking. This was the craziest thing in the world. Here was this old woman who could very well be his grandma come to see him. Telling him what to do.

Well shit, this was the funniest thing in the world. "You brought me some cake and pie?"

"I'm going to take it back if you don't apologize."

"Who sent you out here? You sure you ain't my grandma?"

"I know about you because of Lamar, your uncle. Do you want this piece of cake and pie?" Mattie was still standing.

"Yeah. I'll take a piece of cake and pie. I apologize." He looked around.

"I put it on a paper plate in case you didn't want to eat it right now and—"

"I'll eat it right now."

Mattie opened the tin container. She lifted her foot over the bench to sit down, and noticed that she was still a little sore from falling through the chair. She'd tell him about falling through the chair. People liked that story and she'd gotten it down pretty well. Everybody else knew about it; why not him? "I'm a little sore from falling through a chair," she said as she sat down slowly.

"What's in the paper sack?"

"Iced tea and a plastic fork. I brought the tea in a mason jar. I got so many mason jars I don't know what to do."

"The iced tea they got here is rotten. Tastes like it's got rotten oranges in it."

"I've tasted tea like that." She pulled the tea out of the paper sack and set it between them, twisted off the top. "Well, this ain't rotten. There you go. You can start on that." From the tin container she lifted out the paper plate with a piece of cold apple pie and a piece of pound cake on it. Well, he was the one person since Monday who hadn't wanted to know every single detail about her falling through the chair. She pulled out the plastic fork wrapped in a paper towel and laid it on the table. "Help yourself."

Wesley looked at the plate with the big piece of pie, big hunk of cake. The apple pie was not runny. It was solid, the apples held together with a cold solid filling. It was thick, with a faint hint of sparkling sugar on the crust. Resting beside it was the thick hunk of pound cake, visibly moist. And the jar of tea with ice cubes, the jar looking wet and cold. He looked at Mattie's face. She was looking at him. He reached for the jar of tea, sipped, then drank. He put the tea down, picked up the fork and cut a big corner off the cake stuck it from the top with the fork—it hung together with moisture—and put it in his mouth. It was the best thing he'd ever eaten in his life. "That's the best cake I ever had in my life."

"Well, I'm glad you like it. But, listen, you should be more careful about your language."

Wesley wanted to finish the cake so he could get to the pie. He looked around. It was a wonder somebody wasn't coming over to get some. "Where's Lamar?"

"I don't know. I didn't tell anybody I was coming, I just took off on the spur of the moment after I washed my dinner dishes."

Wesley was eating the pie. It was the best pie he'd ever had. The cinnamon. That was it, and the apples and crust had a little crispy crunch. "You seen Lamar today?"

"No, I saw him yesterday. He fixed a chair of mine."

"In his shop?"

"I reckon so."

"He's got one hell of a shop."

Mattie decided to let the "hells" and "damns" go. They let them go on television. "Well, he did a nice job on the chair."