Walking Through Shadows (5 page)

I had seen proof of this when he was courting Sheila. One day he had narrowly missed being gored by the Jersey bull, Franklin, when he jumped in the lot and waved his red handkerchief like a bullfighter. Another time on a Friday after the milk run, Stoney had dared Shorty to throw knives at him, and he had stood unblinking against the barn door as a reluctant Shorty tossed wobbling blades around him.

When we returned from the show that night, I had trouble falling asleep. I imagined Stoney’s hand sliding up my thigh; I felt his eyes burning like hot suns through my chest. But the worst thought, the one secret I never told, was the monstrous idea that swallowed up reason in my brain. What if? I asked myself. What if Sheila got sick like Aunt Doris and died and Stoney fell in love with me?

Grandma says you have to watch out for the worm in the apple, and perfect as my friendship with Sheila was, an occasional crawler wiggled into our relationship. One such time was the day we went on a picnic to Johnsons’ Hole.

Johnsons’ Hole was part of the Tickfaw River that ran along the eastern boundary of Lexie County and on into Louisiana where it widened and burst into Lake Mariposa. In some places the river was only four feet wide as it twisted and turned beneath the high red clay banks. On a narrow rutted lane jutting off from Johnsons’ Road, you came to a horseshoe bend cut out in the tangle of cottonwoods and pine and ash. Here the water deepened and then turned azure against a small beach of white sand. This was Johnsons’ Hole, our shady swimming spot that was always winter cold on the hottest of days. It was my idea to take a picnic lunch to this perfect place one hot July day.

Mama said the two of us could go if we promised to be back by afternoon milking. I loaded our picnic basket with leftover roast, biscuits, pears, and two pieces of chess pie. Sheila brought a quart jar of iced tea and a holey quilt which Stoney’s mother had given them. Sheila had never been on a picnic except for the annual church one, and I told her that secular picnics were a lot more fun. For one thing you didn’t have to wait for the preacher to bless the fried chicken for a half hour before you got some.

We rode out with the truck windows down, a hot wind blowing across our faces. I felt so happy I thought I should be singing or dancing or spinning around to show my feelings. I had dreamed of having a Best Friend on days like this, and now she was sitting beside me in the truck, laughing and teasing me about my scraggly ponytail. “You ought to brush your hair one hundred and one strokes every night, Annette,” Sheila said. “Then it’ll get thicker, and when you get your monthlies, it will be curly too.”

I turned to look at her hunched over the steering wheel. “That so?”

She took a quick glance at me. She was a better driver now and she concentrated on staying straight on the right side of Carterdale Road. “Well, it happened to two of my Mama’s sisters and some other folks we knowed, and I know my hair went wavy some the day I started wearing the rag.”

I calculated that there were a lot more straight-haired people in the world than curly-locked ones, but I trusted that I would be one of the lucky ones that received the miracle. If Sheila said it would happen, then it surely would. She and Stoney had been married for eight months then, and she had become my personal encyclopedia from A to Z on all matters of the body and the heart.

When we arrived at Johnsons’ Hole, Sheila spread out the quilt on the white sand and immediately sat down and kicked off her shoes. Pulling off her socks, she jumped up and ran to the water’s edge where she dipped one foot in and quickly withdrew it. “It’s cold,” she said hurrying back to where I stood on the quilt.

I shed the blouse and shorts I had worn over my bathing suit that Mama had made with a flounced skirt that nearly came down to my knees. It was long waisted, with yellow and green swirls on a white background, and I was glad there were no boys around because the suit plainly revealed that my left breast was the size of a hickory nut, and my right breast was missing altogether. I gathered up my skirt and ran into the water until it reached my waist. I shivered. Goose bumps rose up on my arms. “Come on,” I called back to Sheila. “Put on your suit and come out here.”

“Don’t have one,” she said. Then she shrugged out of her dress and tossed it backwards to the quilt. “I’m coming in the water in my birthday suit,” she yelled and, laughing, she stepped out of her panties and pulled off her brassiere. I stood frozen in the waist-deep water. I had never seen a naked adult before. As she came toward me, a knot formed in my head and I shifted from one foot to the other trying to figure out how to act. I wondered should I look away until she was underwater, or should I act like her being naked wasn’t any different than Lil’ Bit running around with his little wee wee flopping. I looked down at the green water and thought that my flabby white toes seemed indecent to me now. The water rippled around me as she came nearer. I looked up and saw that Sheila was still grinning beneath her wrinkled nose and crinkled eyes. “Ooooh,” she said. “It is cold as an icicle, ain’t it?”

When I looked at the pale pink nipples marching stiffly toward me, I saw a purple crescent-shaped bruise on her left breast. “What happened?” I asked.

Sheila frowned. “What?”

I pointed to her chest.

“Oh,” she smiled. “Just a loving mark.”

I looked down at my white fish toes burrowing in the mud. “Did Stoney do that to you?”

“Yeah, but it don’t hurt none now.” When Sheila waded out to me, she held my hands, pulling me around in a circle. “Ring around the rosie,” she sang. She kept pulling me in circles, around and around as the water swirled against our thighs. She threw her head back and looked up at the green canopy of leaves overhead. “Hey, there’s a rope tied up there. We could swing off it and fall in the water.”

I looked up. A frayed rope, looped over a high limb of the water oak, dangled down six feet or so above the dark water. Sheila’s idea appealed to me about as much as a triple dose of castor oil. “It might break,” I said. “Looks old.”

But Sheila was already wading out of the water toward the beach. I watched her go. Water cascaded off her hump and fell onto her glistening white buttocks. My mouth went dry and I licked my lips trying to summon up some spit. “Sheila,” I called. “Don’t do it. It’s too high in the tree. You’ll get hurt.” Then the piece of me that was Mama, and which I hated, caused me to scream. “You don’t know how to swim. You’ll be killed. Stop! Come back right now.”

Sheila didn’t answer me. She rounded the horseshoe beach and climbed the bank toward the tree. I squatted farther down and peed; the warm water against my leg comforting me. “Please God, don’t let her die,” I begged. “Don’t take my Best Friend away from me.” I kept on praying, bargaining with Him as I watched her awkwardly scaling the trunk of the tree. She hoisted herself to the thick branch just below where the rope was looped halfway down the overhead limb. When she crawled out hugging the rough bark, I could feel its scrape against the tender skin of her stomach and breasts. She sat up and straddled the limb, and grabbing the rope, she pulled on it, testing its strength. I held my breath, my toes digging deeper into the mud. She would be too far out for me to save her; I was a dog-paddler, not a strong swimmer. “Send someone to help me,” I begged God. Sheila waved, then she stood up, teetering on those butter paddle feet, her toes curled over the limb. I closed my eyes. “Please. Please,” I whispered. Then I started to cry.

Suddenly she was gone from the branch; where she had stood there was a patch of blue sky wavering against the bouncing limb. I looked out across the water and saw her hugging the rope like a lover, her knees wrapped around it, her hands crossed over her head. The thick braid nestled between her breasts and ran down the center of her body, and I felt the rough hemp chafing her skin. She swung far out and leaned back as the centrifugal force brought her around toward me. “Whoooooo,” she screamed. “Whoaaaaaaa.” Then scissoring her legs, pushing the rope away, she released it. She fell like an inverted arrow shot from God’s bow toward the earth. When I saw the titanic splash where she went in, I began to dog-paddle out as fast as I could. She came up, laughing, treading water and slowly moving toward me; I wanted to slap her. I wanted to wipe that smile off her face and scream at her that she had ruined everything. Didn’t she care that I loved her so much?

Later, after stuffing our bellies with roast and chess pie, we lay side by side on the warm quilt. I fanned my hair out to dry and looked up at the cotton ball clouds. “Weren’t you scared?” I asked Sheila. “Didn’t you think you might get killed?”

Sheila crooked her little finger over mine. “Nope. I weren’t scared none.” She sat up and looked down into my face. “I don’t reckon I know what fear is really. I ain’t never truly felt it.”

I sat up too and knelt on the quilt facing her. “You mean you aren’t scared of snakes, panthers, or getting gored by a bull? Of anything?” I couldn’t imagine not being afraid. When I was little, I had been terrified of Aunt Bernice’s wig, Grandma’s outhouse, and even bunny rabbits, whose sharp teeth looked like white daggers in their pink mouths.

Sheila sat back on her hands, sticking her legs out in front of her. Although I was still wearing my bathing suit, she had thrown her dress on over her wet body and parts of it clung to her skin. She lifted the hem and pushed it back over her knees. “Well, there’s bad things that can happen, but the way I see it is, if you go worrying about what might happen all the time, then you gonna miss out on what is. Take that snake over there. He ain’t gonna hurt you if’n you leave him to his business.” She rocked back on her hands. “Try this. Lay down with your cheek flat on the grass, close one eye, and look out between the blades. You’ll see what that snake sees, get his point of view. Snakes is to be pitied. So why would you want to go worrying about him when you could be enjoying a walk or,” she patted her stomach, “a piece of chess pie?”

I leaned back on my heels. “But Mama says you got to be prepared for danger. And Grandma says, ‘Forearmed is forewarned.’”

Sheila shook her head. “I don’t understand that. All’s I know is I get up ever morning thinking something good’s gonna happen, and most times it does. If’n it don’t, I just walk through my shadow. Look here,” she spread her arms wide. “We having a grand time right now, ain’t we?”

I nodded. We were having a wonderful day, and as we packed our things and drove home, I pushed away my fears. I wasn’t going to be like the Bancroft women, worrying themselves into a frenzy over nothing.

Stoney was waiting for her in the yard with a string of catfish. As I walked toward him, I thought of the bruise on Sheila’s breast and felt my face heating up. I wished I hadn’t seen it, wished she hadn’t told me Stoney had put it there. Sheila let out a whoop and pointed to the fish. “Ain’t this just the greatest day!” she squealed. “A picnic and catfish all in one day.” Stoney was grinning, enjoying her happiness like it was his. I saw his violet eyes soften as she reached out to touch his hand. I saw the way she leaned into him going all soft and limp into his arms. I understood now. Sheila’s breast was bruised with love.

Every year, when the love bug season was over and the cool winds blew in from the north, my family began preparations for the fair. Mama entered nearly all of the contests. She won blue and red ribbons for cream-colored roses, red velvet cake, thick fig preserves, and her famous wedding ring quilt. I entered brownies annually and was usually awarded the tacky golden third-place ribbon. But it was Daddy who had the highest aspirations at the fair. It was his chance to show his best animals to his competitors, and after blue ribbons were tacked on the temporary stalls of his Holsteins and Jerseys, he couldn’t be persuaded to leave the livestock barn for any reason. He positioned himself for most of the day beside his ribbons where he was available to answer any questions and accept all compliments from the people who strolled by. Mama and I took all his meals out there, and he would sit on a hay bale, enveloped in a cloud of smelly cow shit, and chew a fried chicken wing like he was eating steak on a snowy tablecloth in a fancy restaurant.

So it was Daddy who decided that we would go to the state fair in Jackson. He was especially thrilled because a man from Greenwood was bringing his Ayrshire cows for judging. Daddy had read just about everything ever written about the breed and he was crazy to own a few head. Maybe part of his interest stemmed from the fact that Ayrshires were from Scotland and Grandma Cotton was a Granstoun from the village of Heron in the southern part of that country. She claimed to be descended from Lord Granstoun, and over the piano in her living room she had placed a framed family Coat of Arms. It depicted a knight’s head in armor with a white heron on top; beneath the knight three more birds walked across the orange shield, and horseshoed across the top of the images, the motto read “Thou shalt want ere I want.” Daddy said the motto fit his growing-up years underneath Grandma’s rule perfectly. Grandma and Grandpa Cotton lived on a farm twenty miles south of Jackson, so we would visit them on our way to the fair.

I had never been to the state fair, and I was wild with expectations. Daddy said I could take one friend and, of course, I chose Sheila, who easily cajoled my good-humored father into a day off for Stoney too. Since Lil’ Bit had a cold, he and Mama would stay home with the extra hands that Daddy had hired to run the dairy for the day. So the four of us set out at five a.m. in Mama’s Dodge, with its brand new Firestones. I hated the thought of stopping at my paternal grandparents’. I barely knew them, as about the only time we visited was on holidays. They were old old. Grandpa Cotton’s back was bent into a u-shape, and he walked with his legs splayed so wide he resembled a crab inching down their front walk as he came out to hug us. Grandma had lost her dentures, and I couldn’t understand about half of what she said. Most of her comments centered around Daddy’s thinness and my nose turning up on the end like hers. It was hard for me to imagine Mama and Daddy as young people, but it was impossible to believe these two could ever have been capable of running or even managing a fast walk. As I sat in the hot kitchen, which smelled of rancid bacon grease, I chanted inside myself, “Stop talking. Let’s go. Let’s go.”

Finally, after what seemed like hundreds of hours to me, we left my grandparents leaning crookedly on each other in the drive, withered arms lifted in a feeble wave. Sheila said, “Your granny and gramp sure are sweet folks, and I never seed a crochet toaster cover like that they got.”

I rolled my eyes. Sheila and I didn’t always think alike.

By the time we arrived at the fairgrounds, I was nearly worn out with anticipation, but when I saw the crowds and enormous rides that reached toward the perfect blue sky, I ran toward the midway. Daddy jerked me back with a strong hand. First things first, he told me. We would see the Ayrshires, eat lunch, and afterwards I would be allowed to spend the afternoon at the midway.

The livestock barns were easy to find because of the bleating, whinnying, and mooing homesick animals. Had the animals been silent, we would have found them by following our noses. Even though I was antsy and pouting about being in the barns, I instantly fell in love with a hinnie named Rhubarb. I preferred hinnies to mules because, since they are the result of breeding a stallion horse to a donkey jennet, they tend to be more horselike than the mule, and in my mind, much better looking. Rhubarb was small, as hinnies usually are, and he was wearing a flowered hat with holes cut for his ears. He brayed as I walked by and lifted his head, cocking the hat in a saucy greeting. Sheila loved him too, and when she reached out to stroke the taffy-colored point on his nose, he nudged closer, lifting his white socks like a show horse. Laughing, we moved on through the hog pens, the horse stalls, the goats and sheep pens, but after Sheila wasted so much time admiring every animal she passed, my mood turned black, and I began to hate every four-legged creature who was keeping me from the tilt-a-whirl.

The cows were in the last livestock barn. Here Daddy moved even more slowly, stopping at every stall to gaze at a Holstein, a Guernsey, or a Jersey. On his face was a look more reverent than Mama’s in church, and his choice of a place of worship was suitable if you took into account the stable story of Jesus’ birth. I figured Daddy would kneel when we got to the temple of the Ayrshires. He didn’t, but when he got a glimpse of the red and white spotted purebreds, he yelled like a zealot. “Look. There they are. The Ayrshires!” I drew back from the foot-long polished horns which curved out toward our smooth foreheads. Mr. Patterson, the owner, showed up immediately. He ranted on and on about the Ayrshires and the Ayrshire Milk Program. He claimed the cow with the jagged red spot shaped like an accordion, was a descendant of Tomboy and Alice, who were famous for walking from Brandon, Vermont, to the National Dairy Show at St. Louis and still producing a record amount of milk on arrival. As I watched Mr. Patterson, rising on his toes, waving his arms, I was reminded of Brother Wells, our last revival preacher. When Mr. Patterson ranted about the ungodly dairymen who didn’t officially recognize the impressive amounts of milk and butterfat his cows produced, his voice rose and fell exactly like Brother Wells’ when he talked about the sinners who didn’t know Jesus. And when Mr. Patterson forcefully grabbed Daddy by the shirt front to assure him the Ayrshires were hardier than any other breed, I could imagine Brother Wells jerking up one of those sinners and shaking him into belief. By the time we finally left the holy barn and headed for the oasis of the midway, Daddy was a convert and the owner of two registered Ayrshires and a brand new trailer for them to ride home in.

Ultimately the fair both enchanted and repulsed me. It was an island world set apart from normal civilization where children and adults of every description walk side by side anonymously, severed from their professions and neighborhoods and daily routines. The barkers and ticket takers took our money with ingratiating smiles, nodding at our eagerness to be whirled into the air, to throw balls at stuffed cats, and to stare at grotesque humans sitting behind gaudy curtains. But there was beauty, too, in the calliope music, the freshly painted black carousel horse I sat astride, rising and falling in the crisp air as I circled the crowd of waving hands. There was the sweet stickiness of pink cotton candy and the laughter of small children and teddy bears with blue ribbons around their necks, glass beads that glinted like diamonds in the bright sunlight, colored plastic fish with numbers taped on their bellies. And there were other exotic attractions that beckoned us to foreign lands.

From her raised wooden platform, Salome caught Stoney’s eye as we walked by. “Hey,” she called to him. “Come on over. See me do the hoochy koochy.” She wriggled her hips, making the coins around her hips dance. The sheer green veil on her head was drawn across her nose and mouth, exposing only her eyes, dark with mascara. Her vest was brocaded with golden threads, and her harem pants clung to her hips. Above her bare feet wide bracelets jangled on her ankles as she moved across the makeshift stage. She clicked a pair of finger cymbals at Stoney, and rolled her hips in a wide circle. Stoney stopped walking so suddenly Sheila ran into his back. He turned and stood smiling at Salome until Sheila grabbed his right hand and sunk her teeth into it like a dog clamping on a steak bone. Stoney yelled and jerked away. When he lifted his hand and saw that he was bleeding, his other arm flew up. I heard the slap and the word “bitch” simultaneously as Sheila’s head swiveled toward me.

I supposed this was the first time Stoney struck her because Sheila’s face registered such surprise. And, watching Stoney’s lavender eyes turn to deep purple, I think he was horrified too. I was righteous, thinking to myself that she shouldn’t have bitten him for just looking, and I wished for Daddy to hurry back from the knife-throwing booth where he was trying to win me a bear.

By the time Daddy showed up holding a scruffy brown bear with a wrinkled yellow ribbon around its neck, Sheila and Stoney had walked away for a private talk. Accepting the bear with a frown, I wondered if I should tell Daddy what had happened or not, but before I could decide what to say, Salome came back on stage and set her hips to rotating like a big slow-moving fan. This time it was my father she called to. “Buy a ticket, and I’ll show you my hoochy koochy.” I was expecting Daddy to look away and hurry me on to the next attraction. But instead he lifted his eyes and ran them up the harem pants to the exposed navel, where they seemed to pause a minute, before traveling on up to the v-cut of the vest. When he finally lifted his gaze to her oversized red lips, he said, “How much?”

I gasped out loud. Was he actually going to mount those wooden steps, walk across the stage, and go behind the burlap curtain? He was, and he did after looking down at me and telling me to wait for him right where I stood. I turned my back to stare at the stupid kids who were riding a fake train around a track going nowhere. I made ugly faces at every one of them as they chugged by, waving their chubby hands and smiling at their good daddies who wouldn’t be caught dead in Salome’s den. But no matter how hard I tried to block it out, I could hear the provocative music wafting out from behind me. On the sides of the colorful train, I imagined Salome’s hips grinding toward my father. I saw my mother’s face; her eyes were swollen from crying, mouth open in pain. I hated Daddy and I hated those damned Ayrshires too.

I don’t know what I might have said to Daddy when he finally came out from behind the curtain and tapped me on the shoulder, because when I turned to stare up into his red face, Stoney and Sheila came running up, holding hands and grinning. I saw that Stoney’s hand was bandaged with a handkerchief and Sheila’s eye had begun to swell. I tried to smile back at them.

“Well, here you are,” Daddy said in this cheerful fake voice I had never heard before. “We’ve been looking all over for you.” He gave me an even phonier smile. “Haven’t we, Annette?”

I drew up my shoulders and moved toward Sheila. He was asking me to lie. I thought about Grandma saying something about how the mighty have fallen, from the Bible or some Greek play. And I remembered how she also told me that one small lie like a pebble can grow into a boulder and over time will become a towering mountain. Let Daddy pickax his way up the mountain alone, I thought to myself. But, as if reading my mind, he reached out and pulled me toward him. He bent forward until his face was even with mine. “No harm done, honey,” he whispered. “It was all in fun. Don’t be so hard on your poor old daddy.”

A whiff of cheap perfume sailed off him and nearly hardened my softening heart back to granite, but when I saw his same old smile, his eyes clear and kind like the ones he’d come with, I forgave him. I nodded; a co-conspirator in his lie, I turned to Sheila and Stoney. “Yeah, we were looking everywhere,” I said.

After the Ayrshires were put in their new stalls that night and Mama had admired them enough for Daddy’s satisfaction, I lingered at the barn. I walked up to the Ayrshire with the longest horns and looked her in the eye. “I hate you,” I said. “Your real name is Salome, and someday I will butcher you and carry your head to my mother’s table.” The cow lifted her head and stared back at me. When she lowed mournfully out into the dark barn, I knew she understood.