Walking Across Egypt (6 page)

"Well... I don't know. You really think so?"

"I don't want to make a decision without seeing the stainless steels," said Mattie. "Would it be all right if we came back?" she said to Mr. Crosley.

"Why certainly. No problem at all. I'll give one of you a call when they come in, Mrs. Turnage."

"What's the advantage of the stainless steel?" asked Pearl.

"It lasts," said Mr. Crosley.

"Oh, I see."

"Although I don't think you're going to find anything more beautiful than the oak," said Mr. Crosley.

"You ought to buy one then," said Mattie. "Get on the plan yourself."

That night Mattie watched a show about alligators. She enjoyed the nature programs more than any others except Billy Graham. Sometimes she called Robert or Elaine when an especially good nature program was coming on. And she always called to remind them when Billy Graham was coming on, but later if she asked them if they watched it, they hadn't.

Before going to bed Mattie played "Love Lifted Me," "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross," and "To a Wild Rose." She hummed "Walking Across Egypt," that hymn her father used to sing to her. She couldn't remember the words. She had the music to it somewhere. And he'd used that title as a saying all the time. He had sung a different song for each child before bedtime, and sometimes he sung to them in the daytime during a water break in the fields. He died from typhoid fever when she was eight, Pearl was ten, four older brothers, and one on the way.

On Thursday afternoon, Bill Yeats brought back the covered chair bottoms. He arrived at about 3:30. Mattie had a pound cake, apple pie, and vanilla ice cream for him to choose from.

Before Bill ate, he screwed in the four kitchen-chair bottoms. He leaned the rocker-chair bottom against the wall in the den. "Where's your rocker?"

"Dogcatcher's got it. I had a little accident with it. Set through it without the bottom in it. And the dogcatcher had to cut me out. He's putting it back together where he sawed it."

"Good gracious. You hurt yourself?"

"Oh, no."

Bill chose apple pie and ice cream.

As Mattie cut the pie and then dipped ice cream she studied the color of the kitchen-chair bottoms. She put the pie and ice cream in front of Bill. "Let me just look over here a minute." She walked over and inspected the rocker bottom. Come to think of it, the color that was on them before was just right. "They're too yellow, I think," she said. "I know you think I'm crazy, but I'll tell you what I was thinking; do you still have that material that was on them?"

"It's around the shop somewhere."

"Well, if you could get it cleaned and put it back on and cover them with clear plastic I'd be much obliged. Do you have any clear plastic?"

"Oh yes."

"I just know I'd be happy with that. I'll pay you, of course."

"No problem, no problem at all, Mrs. Rigsbee. I'll just take them right back."

"Well, I sure do appreciate it."

When Bill finished his ice cream and pie, he unscrewed the bottoms, and as he left said, "If this keeps up, Mrs. Rigsbee, I'm going to gain ten, fifteen pounds."

"Wouldn't hurt none. You could use a little filling out."

Later, Mattie walked out to the garage and found boards to cover her remaining three open chair bottoms. No need not to have your kitchen like you want it if that's where you spend most of your life, she thought, and course that's changing some, with me slowing down and all. But I can't like it in here with chair bottoms that are too yellow. It needs to be comfortable. I might as well do a little something for myself once in a while. And the least I can do is leave things the right color. Course Robert's liable to sell them. No telling what he might do. Maybe I should leave them to Elaine and... I do have to get all that straight in the will like Alora said.

Robert called Friday and said he was coming for lunch on Saturday. Mattie was glad because she wanted to talk to him about her will, about who was to get what. No need not to talk about it, think about it. Everybody had to die sooner or later. You might as well face it.

That dogcatcher was supposed to come too, and bring back her rocker. She wondered what Robert would think of him.

Robert showed up early, at about eleven, while Mattie was in the garden picking tomatoes. The food was on: string beans, corn and butterbeans, chicken, creamed potatoes, cornbread, and some good early bitter turnip salet. Robert went in, not noticing Mattie in the garden. He stood at the desk in the den and looked through the mail. He was on several mailing lists that still had his old address. He walked past the counter over to the stove and picked up the lids to each pot to see what was cooking.

Mattie came in with a wicker basket full of tomatoes. "Howdy. I don't know how I got so behind on tomatoes."

Mattie had always hoped Robert would grow up to be a doctor or preacher and that Elaine would marry one. But Robert was an unmarried businessman and Elaine, an unmarried teacher, and every week the chances for grandchildren grew slimmer.

They both dated. Dated fairly nice people. For almost a year, Elaine had dated a "farm worker" who Mattie thought would be a farm worker, but he was from Boston, and worked for the state. Something about crops. He went on crop walks—looking at crops. And Robert had dated three different supermarket check-out girls. One had been very young. But neither Robert nor Elaine had ever dated the same person over a year or so, and then three years ago Elaine had said she wanted to not date at all for a while so she could get to know herself. Mattie argued with her that she ought to already know herself—after thirty-five years. Elaine angrily said that well, she didn't, so Mattie backed off. Mattie had always dreamed of their talking together as Elaine grew older, about woman things. There would be so much to talk about. But it never happened that way. It always seemed like maybe it would happen in a year or two, but it didn't. When Mattie tried to talk to Elaine, Elaine would launch into all these confusing questions: Why shouldn't a woman have the same opportunities as a man? Why couldn't career goals be as important as kitchen goals to a woman? The questions confused Mattie in her head but not in her heart, and Elaine would go off with this see-I-told-you-so attitude when she hadn't really told anything. She'd just asked two or three kind of odd questions.

Robert was reading the paper—sitting on the couch where his father used to sit.

Mattie sliced two tomatoes, put ice in two glasses. Every once in a while she needed to remind them both of what they needed to be about in life: having a family. A Christian family. If they didn't hurry it would be too late to have children. It was her duty to remind them. That was a main reason mothers existed. To remind.

And now chances looked slim. She could not understand.

And Robert. Now he was dating that nice woman who didn't dress right: Shirley. He was forty-three for goodness sakes. Shirley was thirty-four, and for some reason Robert had gotten mad when Mattie asked him how old she was. He was like that sometimes.

Mattie did not want to die without grandchildren. She often thought of the links that extended back to Adam, a direct line, like a little dirt road that extended back through forests of time, through a little town that was her mother and father, on back through her grandparents, a little road that went back and back and back across lands and woods and back across to England and back to deserts and the flood and Noah and on back to Adam and Eve. A chain, thousands and thousands of years long, starting way back with Adam and Eve, heading this way, reaching the last link with Robert and Elaine Rigsbee, her own two children, two thousand years after Jesus. And there to be stopped dead forever.

"Come on. It's about ready," said Mattie.

Robert walked to the dinner table. "Where'd the chair bottoms go?" he said.

"They just got up the other morning and walked out the door."

"Ah." Robert smiled. His mother always did have a sense of humor. She had a lot of things, a lot of ways that would have served her well out in the real world if she'd ever gotten out there. But now the world out there was so complicated, she wouldn't last a minute; here she was slowing down now and he didn't want to think about it—except for the fact that Elaine was the one who ought to take care of her if she ever needed it—if Elaine weren't too wrapped up in all her own stuff, Get Out the Vote, and all that crap.

"I got some of the best turnip salet," said Mattie, setting a butter dish on the table. "Patsy Mae come got me the other morning and she's got five patches of it on her place and more vines of butterbeans than you can imagine." Mattie sat down at the table, reached for the butter. "Listen, I need to talk to you about how to set up my will."

"Probably the best thing to do is talk to a lawyer."

"Well, I want to talk to you first. You're the man in the family."

"Well, the main thing I got to say is see a lawyer. Divide the money down the middle and give Elaine all the furniture she wants and I'll take the rest. Something like that. I do want those three lamps. You know that."

"Well, I need to get it all straight." Mattie got up for the pickle dish, sat back down. "How's Shirley?"

"I don't know."

"You haven't seen her lately?"

"We stopped dating."

"You did? Well, I'm sorry."

Robert took a sip of tea. "You sure?"

"Sure what?"

"Sure you're sorry."

"Well, yes. She was a nice girl and I thought y'all liked each other."

"I didn't think you liked her that much."

"I liked her okay."

"That's just it. You liked her 'okay.'"

"Let's say the blessing. Do you want to say it?"

"Not especially."

"Dear Lord, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. We pray in Thy precious name. Amen. Well, let's see..."

"You talked about the way she dressed."

"Well, there were times when she just didn't fix herself up."

"You made that clear. Pass those potatoes, please."

"Robert, I liked Shirley fine. You don't have to pay so much attention to every little thing I say."

"I know I don't. You don't have to say them either."

"Well, I should be able to speak my mind to my own son. You have to make up your own mind about who you want to marry."

"Cornbread ... Thanks."

"Don't you want some of this turnip salet?"

"No, thank you."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

After lunch Robert settled again on the couch.

Mattie washed dishes. "Have you got time to clean out my gutters?" she asked. Cleaning out the gutters was one of the things she couldn't do around there anymore. She didn't want to have one of her dizzy spells on the way up a ladder or squatting on the roof, perched over a gutter.

"Yeah, I can clean out the gutters." Robert didn't consider himself a handyman, one of the main reasons he didn't have a house. He'd learned a few things about himself and didn't mind telling people. One thing he didn't like was yard work. That's why he bought himself a condo. Got one while the getting was good, too. He could sell it right now for twice as much as he paid for it. When someone asked him how he was investing his money, he said real estate. He didn't say lamps unless he knew the person asking was interested in antiques. He had his thirty-two best lamps in his two bedrooms and the other fifty-six were stored. When they became worth thousands and thousands he'd start advertising them one at a time in Antiques Magazine. Many of them had more than doubled in value since he'd bought them.

"We'll need Finner's aluminum ladder. But I don't believe they're home and I'll bet their garage is locked," said Mattie. "Walk out there and see if they're home. If they're not, the garage might be unlocked, but I doubt it. Let me finish up here and I'll meet you in the backyard."

Robert walked out to Alora and Finner's. They weren't home and the garage was locked. Back in the backyard he said to Mattie, "We got that old heavy ladder stuck up on the back of the garage, don't we?"

"I believe we do. I'd forgot about it."

Robert got the ladder. It was a long, heavy wooden ladder with round wooden rungs. He leaned it against the gutter at the back of the house. "Where are some gloves?" he asked Mattie.

"Right here inside the door. And I got a stick and the basket over there for you. You can sort of push up the pine straw out of the gutters."

"I know how to do it."

"I declare I wish Finner and Alora would cut some of those pine trees down."

"Have you asked them?"

"No."

"Why don't you ask them?"

"They talk about how much they like them all the time. Wind blowing through them and everything."

"Well, I'd ask them if I were you."

Robert put on the gloves. Mattie handed him the stick and basket and he started up the ladder slowly, unsurely.

The top half of the ladder was mostly rotten.

When his hands were four rungs from the top—about a foot below the gutter—he stepped up. His foot crashed through the rung and his leg and knee hit against and popped out the next two higher rungs. His other leg jerked upward frantically, knocking out another rung. One side of the ladder snapped dully, but held together, throwing Robert slightly sideways so that he fell completely through—popping out more rungs. He hung from his armpits and chin on the fourth from the top rung. There were no rungs left between that one and the ones below his feet. He was barely out of reach of the gutter. Reaching the gutter would not have helped; it would only have given him a different place to hang from. He did not have the strength to pull himself up. He was too high to let go, and any maneuvering with his legs could cause the rotten, cracked side of the ladder to break completely through.