The police had been inspired by the charred remains they found in the basement to look down the well and then to dig up the chicken yard and the floor of the stable. They had brought around a rowboat to dredge the water hole. They were really very thorough. They kept making their discoveries and laying out what they found in neat rows inside the barn. They had called in the county sheriff and his men to help with the crowds and they got some kind of order going, keeping people in lines to pass them by the open barn doors so everyone would have a turn. It was the only choice the police had if they didn’t want a riot, but even then the oglers went around back all the way up the road to get into the procession again—it was the two headless remains of Madame Dora and her nephew that drew the most attention, and of course the wrapped bundles of the little ones.
There was such heat from this population that the snow was gone from the ground and on the road and in the yard and behind the house and even into the fields where the trucks and automobiles were parked everything had turned to mud so that it seemed even the season was transformed. I just stood and watched and took it all in, and it was amazing to see so many people with this happy feeling of spring, as if a population of creatures had formed up out of the mud especially for the occasion. That didn’t help the smell any, though no one seemed to notice. The house itself made me sad to look at, a smoking ruin that you could see the sky through. I had become fond of that house. A piece of the floor hung down from the third story where I had my room. I disapproved of people pulling off the loose brickwork to take home for a souvenir. There was a lot of laughing and shouting, but of course I did not say anything. In fact I was able to rummage around the ruin without drawing attention to myself, and sure enough I found something—it was the syringe for which I knew Mama would be thankful.
I overheard some conversation about Mama—what a terrible end for such a fine lady who loved children was the gist of it. I thought as time went on, in the history of our life of La Ville, I myself would not be remembered very clearly. Mama would become famous in the papers as a tragic victim mourned for her good works whereas I would only be noted down as a dead nephew. Even if the past caught up with her reputation and she was slandered as the suspect widow of several insured husbands, I would still be in the shadows. This seemed to me an unjust outcome considering the contribution I had made, and I found myself for a moment resentful. Who was I going to be in life now that I was dead and not even Winifred Czerwinska was there to bend over for me.
Back in town at night, I went behind the jail to the cell window where Bent was and I stood on a box and called to him softly, and when his bleary face appeared, I ducked to the side where he couldn’t see me and I whispered these words: “Now you’ve seen it all, Bent. Now you have seen everything.”
I STAYED IN TOWN to meet every train that came through from Chicago. I could do that without fear—there was such a heavy traffic all around, such swirls of people, all of them too excited and thrilled to take notice of someone standing quietly in a doorway or sitting on the curb in the alley behind the station. And as Mama told me, I knew nothing about the heart of a woman, because all at once there was Winifred Czerwinska stepping down from the coach, her suitcase in her hand. I lost her for a moment through the steam from the locomotive blowing across the platform, but then there she was in her dark coat and a little hat and the most forlorn expression I have ever seen on a human being. I waited till the other people had drifted away before I approached her. Oh my, how grief-stricken she looked standing by herself on the train platform with her suitcase and big tears rolling down her face. Clearly she had no idea what to do next, where to go, who to speak to. So she had not been able to help herself when she heard the terrible news. And what did that mean except that if she was drawn to me in my death she truly loved me in my life. She was so small and ordinary in appearance, how wonderful that I was the only person to know that under her clothes and inside her little rib cage the heart of a great lover was pumping away.
WELL THERE WAS a bad moment or two. I had to help her sit down. I am here, Winifred, it’s all right, I told her over and over again and I held my arms around her shaking, sobbing wracked body.
I wanted us to follow Mama to California, you see. I thought, given all the indications, Winifred would accept herself as an accessory after the fact.
SHE MARRIED MICKEY HOLLER WHEN SHE WAS FIFTEEN. Married him to get out of her latest foster home where her so-called dad used to fool with her, get her to hold him, things like that. Even before her menses started. And her foster mom liked to slap her up the head for no reason. Or for every reason. So she married Mickey. And he loved her—that was a plus. She had never had that experience before. It made her look at herself in the mirror and do things with her hair. He was twenty, Mickey. Real name Mervin. He was a sweet boy if without very much upstairs, as she knew even from their first date. He had a heel that didn’t touch the ground and weak eyes but he was not the kind to lay a hand on a woman. And she could tell him what she wanted, like a movie, or a grilled-cheese sandwich and a chocolate shake, and it became his purpose in life. He loved her, he really did, even if he didn’t know much about it.
But anyway she was out of the house now, and wearing a wedding ring to South Sumter High. Some of the boys said smutty things but the girls looked upon her with a new respect.
Mickey’s uncle Phil had come to the justice of the peace with them to be best man. After the ceremony he grinned and said, Welcome to our family, Jolene honey, and gave her a big hug that lasted a mite too long. Uncle Phil was like a father to Mickey and employed him to drive one of the trucks in his home oil delivery business. Mickey Holler was almost an orphan. His real father was in the state penitentiary with no parole for the same reason his mother was in the burial ground behind the First Baptist Church. Jolene asked Mickey, as she thought permissible now that she was a relation, what his mother had done to deserve her fate. But he got all flustered when he tried to talk about it. It happened when he was only twelve. She was left to gather for herself that his father was a crazy drunk who had done bad things even before this happened. But anyway that was why Jolene was living now with Mickey under the same roof with his uncle Phil and aunt Kay.
Aunt Kay was real smart. She was an assistant manager in the Southern People’s Bank across the square from the courthouse. So between her and Uncle Phil’s oil business, they had a nice ranch house with a garden out back and a picnic table and two hammocks between the trees.
Jolene liked the room she and Mickey occupied, though it looked into the driveway, and she had what she could do to keep it nice, with Mickey dropping his greasy coveralls on the floor. But she understood the double obligations of being a wife and an un-paying boarder besides. As she was home from school before anyone finished their jobs for the day, she tried to make herself useful. She would have an hour or so to do some of her homework and then she would go into the kitchen and put up something for everyone’s dinner.
Jolene had always liked school—she felt at home there. Her favorite subject was art. She had been drawing from the time she was in third grade, when the class had done a mural of the Battle of Gettysburg and she drew more of it than anyone. She couldn’t do much art now at this time in her life as a married woman, not being just for herself anymore. But she still noticed things. She was someone who had an eye for what wants to be drawn. Mickey had a white hairless chest with a collarbone that stood out across from shoulder to shoulder like he was someone’s beast of burden. And a long neck and a backbone that she could use to do sums. He surely did love her—he cried sometimes he loved her so much—but that was all. She had a sixteenth birthday and he bought her a negligee he picked out himself at Berman’s department store. It was three sizes too big. Jolene could take it back for exchange, of course, but she had the unsettling thought that as Mickey’s wife all that would happen in her life to come was she would grow into something that size. He liked to watch her doing her homework, which made her realize he had no
ambition, Mickey Holler. He would never run a business and play golf on the weekend like Uncle Phil. He was a day-to-day person. He did not ever talk about buying his own home, or moving toward anything that would make things different for them than they were now. She could think this of him even though she liked to kiss his pale chest and run her fingers over the humps of his backbone.
Uncle Phil was tall with a good strong jaw and a head of shining black hair he combed in a kind of wave, and he had a deep voice and he joked around with a lot of self-assurance, and dark meaningful eyes—oh, he was a man, of that there was no doubt. At first it made Jolene nervous when he would eye her up and down. Or he would sing a line from a famous love song to her. You are so beautiful to mee! And then he would laugh to let her know it was all just the same horsing around as he was accustomed to doing. He was tanned from being out on the county golf course, and even the slight belly he had on him under his knit shirt seemed just right. The main thing about him was that he enjoyed his life, and he was popular—they had their social set, though you could see most of their friends came through him.
Aunt Kay was not exactly the opposite of Phil, but she was one who attended to business. She was a proper sort who never sat back with her shoes off, and though kind and correct as far as Jolene was concerned, clearly would have preferred to have her home to herself now that Mickey had someone to take care of him. Jolene knew this—she didn’t have to be told. She could work her fingers to the bone and Aunt Kay would still never love her. Aunt Kay was a Yankee and had come to live in the South because of a job offer. She and Uncle Phil had been married fifteen years. She called him Phillip, which Jolene thought was putting on airs. She wore suits and panty hose, always, and blouses with collars buttoned to the neck. She was no beauty, but you could see what had interested Phil—her very light blue icy eyes, maybe, and naturally blond hair, and she had the generous figure that required a panty girdle, which she was never without.
But now Uncle Phil got in the habit of waking them up in the morning, coming into their room without knocking and saying in his deep voice, “Time for work, Mickey Holler!” but looking at Jolene in the meantime as she pulled the covers up to her chin.
She knew the man was doing something he shouldn’t be doing with that wake-up routine and it made her angry but she didn’t know what she could do about it. Mickey seemed blind to the fact that his own uncle, his late mother’s brother, had an eye for her. At the same time she was excited to have been noticed by this man of the world. She knew that as a handsome smiling fellow with white teeth, Phil would be quite aware of his effect on women, so she made a point of seeming to be oblivious of him as anything but her husband’s uncle and employer. But this became more and more difficult, living in the same house with him. She found herself thinking about him. In her mind Jolene made up a story: How gradually, over time, it would become apparent that she and Uncle Phil were meant for each other. How an understanding would arise between them and go on for some years until, possibly, Aunt Kay died, or left him—it wasn’t all that clear in Jolene’s mind.
But Uncle Phil was not one for dreaming. One afternoon she was scrubbing their kitchen floor for them, down on her knees in her shorts with her rump up in the air, and he had come home early, in that being his own boss he could come and go as he liked. She was humming “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and didn’t hear him.
He stood in the door watching how the scrubbing motion was rendered on her behind, and no sooner did she realize she was not alone than he was lifting her from the waist in her same kneeling position and carrying her that way into his bedroom, the scrub brush still in her hand.
That night in her own bed she could still smell Uncle Phil’s aftershave lotion and feel the little cotton balls of their chenille bedspread in the grasp of her fingers. She was too sore even for Mickey’s fumblings.
And that was the beginning. In all Jolene’s young life she had never been to where she couldn’t wait to see someone. She tried to contain herself, but her schoolwork began to fall off, though she had always been a conscientious student even if not the smartest brain in her class. But it was that way with Phil, too—it was so intense and constant that he was no longer laughing. It was more like they were equals in their magnetic attraction. They just couldn’t get enough. It was every day, always while Aunt Kay was putting up her numbers in the Southern People’s Bank and Mickey, poor Mickey was riding his oil route as Uncle Phil devised it to the furthermost reaches of the town line and beyond.
Well, the passion between people can never be anything but drawn to a conclusion by the lawful spouses around them, and after a month or two of this everyone knew it, and the crisis came banging open the bedroom door shouting her name, and all at once Mickey was riding Phil’s back like a monkey, beating him about the head and crying all the while, and Phil, in his skivvies, with Mickey pounding him, staggered around the combined living and dining room till he backpedaled the poor boy up against their big TV and smashed him through the screen. Jolene, in her later reflections, when she had nothing in the world to do but pass the time, remembered everything—she remembered the bursting sound of the TV glass, she remembered how surprised she was to see how skinny Phil’s legs were, and that the sun through the blinds was so bright because daylight saving had come along unbeknownst to the lovers, which was why the working people had got home before they were supposed to. But at the time there was no leisure for thought. Aunt Kay was dragging her by the hair through the hall over the shag carpet and into the kitchen across the fake-tile flooring and she was out the kitchen door, kicked down the back steps, and thrown out like someone’s damn cat and yowling like one, too.
Jolene waited out there by the edge of the property, crouching in the bushes in her shift with her arms folded across her breasts. She waited for Phil to come out and take her away, but he never did. Mickey is the one who opened the door. He stood there looking at her, in the quiet outside, while from the house they listened to the shouting and the sound of things breaking. Mickey’s hair was sticking up and his glasses were bent broken across his nose. Jolene called to him. She was crying; she wanted him to forgive her and tell her it was all right. But what he did, her Mickey, he got in his pickup in his bloody shirt and drove away. That was what Jolene came to think of as the end of Chapter 1 in her life story, because where Mickey drove to was the middle of the Catawba River Bridge, and there he stopped and with the engine still running he jumped off into that rocky river and killed himself.
MORE THAN ONE NEIGHBOR must have seen her wandering the streets, and by and by a police cruiser picked her up, and first she was taken to the emergency room, where it was noted that her vital signs were okay, though they showed her where a clump of her red hair had been pulled out. Then she was put into a motel off the interstate while the system figured out what to do with her. She was a home wrecker but also a widow but also a juvenile with no living relatives. The fosters she had left to marry Mickey would take no responsibility for her. Time passed. She watched soaps. She cried. A matron was keeping an eye on her morning and night. Then a psychiatrist who worked for the county came to interview her. A day after that she was driven to a court hearing with testimony by this county psychiatrist she had told her story to in all honesty, and that was something that embittered her as the double-cross of all time, because on his recommendation she was remanded to the juvenile loony bin until such time as she was to become a reasonable adult able to take care of herself.
Well, so there she was moping about on their pills, half asleep for most of the day and night, and of course as she quickly learned this was no place to regain her sanity, if she ever lost it in the first place, which she knew just by looking at who else was there that she hadn’t. About two months into the hell there, they one morning took off her usual gray hanging frock and put her in a recognizable dark dress, though a size too big, and fixed her hair with a barrette and drove her in a van to the courthouse once again, though this time it was for her testimony as
to her relations with Uncle Phil, who was there at the defense table looking awful. She didn’t know what was different about him till she realized his hair was without luster and, in fact, gray. Then she knew that all this time she had been so impressed he had been dyeing it. He was hunched over from the fix he was in and he never looked at her, this man of the world. A little of the old feeling arose in her and she was angry with herself but she couldn’t help it. She waited for some acknowledgment, but it never came. What it was, Aunt Kay had kicked him out, he was sleeping in his office, his business had gone down the tube, and none of his buddies would play golf with him anymore.
Jolene was called upon to show the judge that she was, at sixteen, underage for such doings, which made Phil a statutory rapist. There was a nice legal argument for just a minute or two as to how she was a married woman at the time, an adulteress in fact, and certainly not unknowing in the ways of carnal life, but that didn’t hold water, apparently. She was excused and taken back to the loony bin and put back in her hanging gray frock and slippers and that was it for the real world. She heard that Phil pulled eighteen months in the state prison. She couldn’t sympathize, being in one of her own.