Whisper Town (8 page)

Jeb ran his fingers down her arms and then leaned over her with one knee against the sofa. Fern kissed him and she tasted
faintly like molasses, as though she had eaten some on bread before Jeb arrived. Jeb touched the buttons on the back of her
dress and then touched his fingers to the strands of hair that hung over her shoulders. The tendrils were soft, like a woman’s
hair feels when it’s washed in rose water. He pressed his lips against her neck and then nuzzled the locket that hung on the
chain around her neck, lifting it with his nose and then kissing the spot where it had rested.

Fern kissed the crown of his head, and then proceeded to press her lips against his brow, the side of his face, and then his
mouth.

Jeb finally confessed about the nights he had lain awake wanting to come to her house and wake her from sleep.

“You should have,” she said.

They talked about how they had allowed too many nights to pass without spending them in the company of one another. Jeb’s
shirt fell open just as a loud knock shook the front of Fern’s house.

She sighed and said, “Don’t answer it.”

The knocker persisted.

Jeb roused but reluctantly. “I’ll get it, but you wait here just as you are.” He kissed her once more as the pounding persisted.
When he opened the door, his eyes locked with Oz Mills’s. Oz glanced at Jeb’s open shirt and then blurted out, “What’s going
on?”

Fern appeared in the doorway. She straightened her blouse and leaned against Jeb, pressing her face into his shoulder. One
hand came up and clasped his upper arm. “We weren’t expecting company.”

Oz slapped what looked to be a telegram into the palm of his hand. “So it’s like this, is it, Fern?”

“From now on,” said Jeb. “May we help you?”

Oz snapped, “Fern has a telegram, if it’s anything to you, preacher boy.” He held it out and Fern took it. Jeb read over her
shoulder. Fern’s daddy had taken a turn for the worst and passed away.

Fern pressed her face into Jeb’s chest and sobbed as though she had been orphaned. He could not hold her in the same manner
he had for the last half hour. So he turned back into a minister. He rested the palms of his hands against her shoulder blades,
let out a sigh, and said, “I’ll help you pack.”

Angel fixed a supper of boiled oats and a side of eggs with a piece of crisped bacon dropped into the skillet to add flavoring.
She burned the toast and the fog from charred bread hung over the stove like a storm. Myrtle cried relentlessly from her bedroom.
Angel finally let out a tidal sigh and told Ida May to either go and close the door or try and rock the baby into a stupor
until Belinda showed up again for the evening feeding.

“I can’t stand the screaming of that kid. Day and night she torments me like a crazy woman.” Willie paced back and forth by
the back door like he would run out of it any minute.

Ida May pulled a chair up to the stove and then climbed onto it. “I’ll finish supper, how about, and you go and rock the baby,”
she said to Angel.

“Supper’s finished. Willie, go for jam in the cellar. Ida May, bring her in here and lay her on a blanket. Maybe if she’s
where she can see all of us, she’ll not feel so left out.” Angel spooned eggs into the plates donated by the women’s committee.
The plates were plain and stamped with lettering that no one could decipher, but they were by far the best plates for keeping
the food warm.

“Babies don’t know if they’re left out. That’s the dumbest thing you’ve said yet,” said Willie.

“Count us out four bowls, Willie,” said Angel. “You want sugar in your oats, then it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself
when you’re talking to the cook.”

Ida May walked with measured steps when she carried Myrtle. Her shoulders were too small for carrying a baby over, so she
cradled the little girl as though she might fold in two. “Willie, make us a little bed out of that blanket Angel left on the
chair. Right h’yere on the floor, but not too close to the doorway.” She talked to Myrtle the whole time in a whisper, as
though the two of them carried on in a mutual language only they possessed. Myrtle let out a breathy “aaahhhh” when Ida May
laid her in the blanket, the kind of sound made by hot-air balloons when they land.

The sound of the front door opening caused all of them to react with a common relief. “Jeb’s finally home,” said Willie, and
he stepped toward the doorway to let Jeb know how bad Myrtle had been.

“Eggs again.” Jeb could smell supper. He tossed some mail on a table in the parlor. “Does anyone care this place smells like
an outhouse?”

“Myrtle filled her britches,” said Ida May. She meandered around Willie and down the hall, muttering about some schoolwork
to which she should attend.

“I don’t clean up baby’s messes,” said Willie. He followed Ida May.

Angel called them back to supper and then said, “You look flush, Jeb. You all right?”

“Fern’s leaving for Oklahoma. Did you make bread?”

“Not for good?”

“Her daddy passed away in the night. I don’t want her driving alone. But she’ll have to drive herself all the way to Ardmore.”

“She must be sad.” Angel yelled down the hallway again for Willie and Ida May.

“Maybe Florence Bernard and Josie could ride with her. That wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

“Josie’s husband couldn’t do without her.” Angel served up the eggs and set a canister of salt on the table. “Maybe I could
go,” she said.

Jeb tried to imagine caring for Myrtle without Angel. The baby flailed and let out a yelp. “Maybe you should,” he said.

Y
OU HAVE TO WATCH CAREFULLY. IT’S NOT LIKE
it’s a big deal. You have to take care of the whole diaper business like you’re cleaning out the stove. Just hold your nose
and get it done.” Angel lectured Jeb, Willie, and Ida May while she showed all three of them how to change Myrtle’s diaper,
a task she labored over, shaking her head and sighing.

“I’m not standing for this,” said Willie. “Me and the boys got ball games to think about. They’d never let me hear the end
of it if they saw me taking diaper duty.”

“Willie, you’ll listen to your sister. Now the three of us together can handle this baby until Angel returns from Oklahoma.”
Jeb squared his shoulders and studied the matter like he would figure out the engine of a truck.

“I don’t want you to go, Angel.” Ida May teared up. “I’ll be the only girl.”

“Always use a warm, damp rag, and a clean one. You see all those towels and rags drying out on the clothesline? I do those
up at least twice a day. If you pitch them in the can out back, you won’t smell up the house so bad. That’s bleach water I
keep them soaking in. Boil the water before you wash them.” She brushed drool away from Myrtle’s mouth.

“Why don’t I go to Ardmore and you stay and bleach baby butt rags?” Willie cupped his hands to his face.

“You’d get too behind in school. Miss Coulter will oversee my studies and I won’t miss out on a thing,” said Angel. She wrapped
the diaper expertly around Myrtle’s bottom. “Clean as a whistle.”

Someone rapped against the new glass of the door window.

“It’s Miss Coulter,” said Willie.

Ida May ran to the door. She hugged Fern around the waist. “I’m sorry you’re sad, Miss Coulter. I wish I could go with you.”

“My daddy’s with God, Ida May.” Fern did not carry the conversation any further, as though to do so would unleash too much.

“Fern.” Jeb took her in his arms and held her next to him. “I want to go with you too.”

“I wish you could. It’s unbelievable you’re sending Angel. I know how badly you need her. Florence Bernard should be here
shortly. Josie’s dropping her off.”

“Mrs. Hipps said she was jealous of me being your escort and all,” said Angel.

“She was downright green. But her husband is too reliant on her on account of his bad leg,” said Fern. She counted the bags
of clothing Angel had placed by the door. “We can fit these in fine, Angel.”

“You’ll be gone for months,” said Ida May.

“Only two weeks, Littlest.” Fern took Ida May by the shoulders and spun her around to refashion her braids. “The thing of
it is, I haven’t been home in two years. This will give me some time with my brothers and our aunts and uncles. It’s a shame
that funerals are the only reunions we have anymore.”

Jeb said, “Ida May and Angel made you ladies a basket of food and I have something else to give you.” He led Fern away from
the Welbys and into the kitchen. He pulled a pistol out of his pocket. “I think you should carry a firearm. That road to Oklahoma
is known for attracting bad seed.”

Fern sighed and stared at the pistol. “Big difference between hunting deer and shooting a man.”

“Come out back and I’ll give you a lesson. I’ll not send off a bunch of women unarmed.”

“I can’t drive and shoot, now can I?”

“Please, Fern. I won’t worry so much.” He placed it back into her hands and closed her fingers over it.

She examined it.

“It’s locked.” He showed her how the device worked, even though she rolled her eyes. “Let’s take it out back.”

Angel yelled from the parlor, “Mrs. Bernard just pulled up.”

Jeb led Fern out back past the clothesline with its colony of white flapping linens and over into a clearing. He showed Fern
a tree he had used for target practice. “Hold your right arm straight and look down this sight with one eye. Then squeeze
the trigger.”

Fern lifted the pistol and aimed. When the gun fired, it caused the children to pour out onto the back porch while Florence
Bernard shouted, “My lands!”

Jeb stepped out the distance between Fern and the tree and then studied the fresh notch he found. “Wrong tree, but you did
hit one.”

“I might be a little rusty. Hand guns are different than rifles.”

“It’s like picking off possums in a tree hole, Miss Coulter,” said Willie.

“Jeb’s let me shoot it a few times, Miss Coulter. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of the Dillingers and you handle the driving,”
said Angel.

“That’d be a sight to see,” said Willie.

Angel watched through the car window as Jeb and Fern said their good-byes. Jeb kept moving a tendril of hair away from Fern’s
eyes, and then hugging her. Jeb finally walked Fern around to the side of their house, out of sight of all of them and, most
likely, away from Florence Bernard’s prying eyes.

“It seems that our minister’s finally gained ground with the schoolteacher,” said Florence. She already had her knitting out
and worked on it from her cramped space in the rear of Fern’s car. “Has he said anything about marriage, or can you say?”

“I can’t say,” said Angel.

Florence laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they hauled off and got married soon.”

“Miss Coulter hasn’t said one way or another. Jeb don’t tell me anything. When he’s not with her, he’s got his head in a book.”

“Reverend sure seems to be enamored of her. Here they come,” said Florence.

Jeb walked Fern to her side of the automobile. He opened her door and helped her to get situated. “Angel, you take care with
that pistol,” he told her.

“It’s hidden under my seat and the safety’s on. I’m sure we won’t need it,” said Angel.

“God forbid.” Florence never looked up from her knitting.

Fern and Jeb made a couple of sappy comments, in Angel’s estimation, and then he closed her door.

Fern watched him walk all the way back to the front porch. “I miss him already,” she said.

“We got tuna fish for lunch. I’ve never been to Oklahoma,” said Angel.

“Is it pretty this time of year where your folks live?” asked Florence.

“Ardmore’s a lot like here, only in the summer it’s far more hot. This time of year, I’d say it’s chilly of a morning and
nice in the afternoon.”

Angel watched the parsonage disappear into the woods. She worried for Myrtle and then for Willie and Ida May. But she worried
more for Jeb, who seemed lost without the help of a woman.

Jeb drove Willie and Ida May to school. They missed the early bell, but promised they’d make up the time with their teachers.
Before Ida May disappeared into the school building with her brother, Jeb noticed she wore bright red socks. He had seen Angel
wearing them to bed on cold nights but never with her school dresses. Ida May must have dug them out of her sister’s things
after she drove away. It was too late to make her change now, and to worry after a girl’s fashions was not on his list of
things to manage.

Myrtle slept quietly in her basket on the truck seat. With the addition of the big laundry basket in the cab, Willie and Ida
May were forced to ride to school in the truck bed. They most likely would not complain over that arrangement until winter
had come full-blown. By then, Jeb prayed that the mother of this baby would show herself or at least that someone would ask
after her.

Wednesday night would be the second time he brought Myrtle to prayer meeting and her third outing to Church in the Dell. He
prayed she would grow on some of the women. She had a way about her, he thought, that made girls coo over her. Willie laughed
at her when she seemed to have smiled for the first time and when she found her thumb. Her hair curled jet black around her
face, flashing like lightning when Angel sunned with her out on the porch. She was a comely girl, if not round at the cheeks
and gaining weight fast like a boy baby. She had grown on him.

It seemed the whole day long to Jeb that he was hauling that laundry basket full of baby first one place and then another.
Belinda had not shown up for the noon feeding and he had resorted to giving Myrtle a bottle, which she did not take to. Beulah
saw him coming up the walk and opened the door for him after which she laughed.

“Don’t say a word, Beulah. Just pour me up a cup of your worst.” Jeb placed the basket behind him on an empty tabletop. He
took his place on a stool, glad to have his hands free. He took out a book he had tucked into the basket and used a pen to
underline the phrases that jumped out at him.

“Biscuits are fresh made,” said Beulah.