“I was surprised, that’s all. If I’d have thought I would have said, ‘Now cool down, Mindy, we’ll figure some other way of doing this.’ But I was surprised. I said, ‘Are you out of your flipping mind? Have you lost your marbles? Do you really believe I would get married, go that whole soft-living route?’ I said. ‘Let alone marry you.’ Then I hung up. I was fit to be tied, I was as mad as I could get. But I know I should have handled it better than what I did.”
“You were just startled,” I told him.
I didn’t mean to take his side like that. But I was touched by the tense, despairing way his hands were gripping the steering wheel. His bitten fingernails pained me. “I would have said the same thing,” I told him.
“Well,” said Jake. “Week or two passes, month or two passes, I get to thinking. I hadn’t seen her in all that time and was starting to notice she was missing. Pictures would pop into my mind. Them perky little bandannas she wore. Way she was always after me to do my magic tricks, and clapped when I was through. Like she was really just a child, you know? Always humming, skipping, swinging my hand when we walked … then I got to wondering how she would stay with her mother, devil of a mother; they hadn’t never hit it off too good. So I thought, Well, least I could do is be of some help to her in this. It’s true I never asked for it but I would hate to feel to blame in any way.’ I mean, I’m not a bad man. Am I?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“I called her house. Her mother says, ‘Too late, Jake Simms.’ Took me three full weeks to track her down. I had to ask her Cousin Cobb. Then I wrote her a letter. I wanted to know if she was okay and needed anything sent. And she wrote back, ‘What I need is out. Please come and get me.’
“Well, I could do that. Question was, where to put her after I got her. If she was just older she might have some married girlfriend or such that she could stay with, but I don’t guess she does and so I thought I would take her on to Florida and look up O.J. Him and me have always kept in touch, you see. He sends me these Christmas cards. And I like to think about him a lot and him reading his books no matter who locks him up.
“I figured Mindy could stay in Florida till the baby comes and then we’d give it out for adoption. I don’t think Mindy would make such a hot mother anyhow. Then she could go on back but I might stay in Florida. They have very fine derbies in Florida. Maybe Oliver and me could room together, like the old days.
“But to get to Florida first you got to have the money, right? And I didn’t have none. I was unemployed; this body shop where I sometimes work had fired me unfairly. Derby season was over and I hadn’t done so good there anyhow. I was having to hang around the house, just rising late and hunting in the icebox and watching TV. Soap operas. Game shows. People winning a thousand tins of cat food or a heart-shaped bed, and all you got to fill your mind is, ‘Wonder where they’ll find the sheets to fit it?’ Stuff like that. I’d always been the kind to spend what I got when I got it and now I didn’t have no savings, couldn’t even help on the groceries. It was sorry times.
“And friends? Used to be you could borrow from your friends, but I don’t know, lately it seems to me like all my friends have gone and married on me. Some of my coolest, finest friends have up and married. I can’t get over it. Leaving me right lonesome, and you know how little cash a married man would have free to lend. Seems like they’re always saving up for a automatic grill and such. There wasn’t no hope there.
“Well, I tell you what I did. I went to my brother-in-law, Marvel Hodge. He runs Marvelous Chevrolet. I’m sure you’ve heard of him. Anytime anything gets to happening on the ‘Late Show’ they break it off and here comes Marvel, wide-faced man with scalloped hair, grinning and slapping a fender. Why my sister married him I’ll never know. I can’t stand the sight of him, myself.
“But I went to him. I drove in to see him in Mom’s old Ford. (Has he ever given her a free Chevy? No. No, nor not even a used one.) I found him out on the lot, kidding around with some customers in this ho-ho way he has. I said, ‘Marvel, like to talk with you a minute.’
“He says, ‘Go ahead, Jake.’
“Right in front of all those people, that’s the kind of man he is.
“I said, ‘Marvel, even though you’re supposed to be some relation to me I’m not such a fool as to ask you for a gift or a loan. I do need money bad but I ain’t going to ask that. All I want is a job, fair and square. Just to tide me over,’ I said. ‘You know full well I’m smarter when it comes to cars than any three men you got. How about it.’
“Know what he did? He started laughing. Starts laughing and shaking his head. Right in front of these customers, whole family: man and wife and two little girls and some kind of uncle or something. ‘Boy,’ he says, ‘now I’ve heard everything. A job, you say. Give Jake Simms a job, that never was out of trouble since the very first day he was born. Why, I’d have to be a total fool.’
“I kept my temper, I will say that. I said, ‘Marvel, I may have done one or two hasty things in my younger days but you got no right to hold that over my head. I’m a grown man now,’ I said, ‘and never get in no more trouble than taking a extra drink or two on a Saturday night. I’d like you to reconsider your words, if you please.’
“ ‘Grown?’ says Marvel. ‘Grown? I doubt I’ll live to see the day,’ he says. ‘Go on, boy, leave me to these good people here.’
“Well, I still kept my temper. Walked back to my Ford, real quiet—felt like I was about to burst but I didn’t say a word. Climbed in, started the engine, fixed the rear-view mirror a little straighter so as I could prepare to back out. But I didn’t back out, I went forward. Well, I don’t know how it happened. I mean I did intend to do it but I didn’t know I was going to do it. I just raced full forward into the car lot, and Marvel sprang left and his customers sprang right. Hit a new Bel Air, buckled in the whole right side. Backed off and hit a Vega. Set on down the row of them, crushing everything I come upon. Fenders was crumpled like paper, bumpers curled, doors falling off—and this crunchy feeling every time I hit and everybody screaming and dancing. Of course my own car got dented some too, but not what you would expect. I believe I could’ve drove her on home, in fact, till I took this notion to hit a Monza head-on. See, in a derby you just don’t hit head-on. The rules don’t allow it. So I got this urge. I hit head-on and the two of them cars went up like the Fourth of July, and I rolled out as quick as I could and was picked off the concrete by three cops.”
I laughed. Jake glanced over at me as if he’d forgotten I was there.
“Later they all tore into me,” he said, “even Mom, asking how come I hadn’t held my temper. But I kept telling them I did hold my temper, for I could have mowed down Marvel and his customers as well but I restrained myself.
“I restrained myself in the jail too and tried hard not to escape. I had determined to be a reasonable man, you see. I just sat tight and waited for my trial. No one that knew me would bail me out, and my mom didn’t have no cash. I had to stay in. It wasn’t easy. I had these funny kinds of sweats at times and hives come up over nine-tenths of my body, but still I held back from escaping.
“Now, this lawyer they got me said I ought to plead guilty. He said there wasn’t no question about it. I said I would be telling a falsehood, if I did that. I said I had been forced to wreck that place, had no choice in the matter whatsoever; Marvel Hodge just drove me to it. ‘Call that guilty?’ I said. ‘No sir, I’m pleading innocent.’ We argued back and forth some over that. And time was passing. Understand that every day was just stretching me one more inch beyond the breaking point. But I held tight, I held tight.
“Day before the trial, Mom brought me this letter. She was my only visitor, see. Sally, my sister, she wasn’t speaking to me. And naturally Marvel didn’t come. If he had of I’d have killed him. Broke out of my cell and killed him.
“Mom brought this letter from Mindy, one I showed you. Addressed to the house. Evidently Mindy hadn’t heard about my trouble.
Her mother either didn’t know or hadn’t passed the news on, one; though I can’t imagine her missing the chance. Anyhow, here’s this letter, asking if I wanted for my son to be born in a prison. That tore me up, I tell you. Seems like I just went wild. How come this world has so many ways of tying a person down? Now there is no way I would sit by and let that happen.
“Next morning they come to take me to the courthouse and on Harp Street I slipped loose, with this one guard’s gun handy in my pocket. Nothing to it. They watch you less careful on the way to a trial; they know you’re thinking far ahead, got some hope of being cleared. Except me. I didn’t have no hope at all. I was like, barred, boxed in. Everybody carried such a set notion of me. I knew the only hope I had was to get away.
“How did I go so wrong? I thought I would clear a thousand at least, hitting that bank. Thought I would be free then and unencumbered. But here we are. Seems like everything got bungled. Every step was stupid, every inch of the way. Every move I made was worse than the one before.”
“You were just unlucky,” I told him. “Never mind.”
“When you think,” said Jake, “that I set all this in motion just to show I ain’t a bad man, don’t it make you want to laugh?”
Late in the afternoon we arrived in Linex, which seemed to be one very wide, empty street. We stopped in front of a grocery store to use the phone booth. “Now the name of this place is the Dorothea Whitman Home,” said Jake. He was leafing through the directory, which was no thicker than a pamphlet. His stubby finger slid down the columns. He had kept the door open and I looked past his shoulder to see, of all things, butterflies, spangling the yellow air. We truly had traveled; we’d left that cold false Maryland spring behind and found a real one. “Look!” I said, and Jake spun toward the door. “Butterflies,” I told him.
“Will you let me get on with this?”
I wasn’t wearing my raincoat any more and he had unzipped his jacket. We were showing whole new layers: identical white shirts. Glassed in the way we were, under the last of the sunlight, we both had a thin shine of sweat like plants in a greenhouse. “In Clarion, it may be snowing,” I said.
“Not likely,” said Jake. His finger had found its mark and stopped. “Dorothea Whitman Home,” he said. “I’ll dial, you talk.”
“How come I have to talk?”
“You don’t think they’d let a man through.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
“Well, I ain’t taking no chances. Ask for Mindy Callender, say it’s her aunt or something.”
He dropped in a dime and dialed. I pressed the receiver to my ear. A woman answered: “Whitman Home.”
“Mindy Callender, please,” I said.
“One moment.”
Something in the lines turned off and on. There was a pause and then a thin voice said, “Hello?”
“Hello. Mindy?”
“Who’s this?”
I handed the receiver to Jake. “Hey there,” he said. He grinned. “Yeah, yeah, it’s me. I’m here. No, that was just—well, I’m fine. How’re you?”
He listened a long time. His face grew serious again. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Really? Well, I’m sorry to … look here, Mindy, I need to know something. Has anybody been asking for me? Asking if you knew my whereabouts? You sure, now. No I’m not in no trouble, quit that. Just tell me where to come for you.”
I pressed my back against the glass of the booth, trying to get more room. I watched Jake’s fingers tap the directory and then grow still. “Why not?” he said. “It ain’t even dark yet. Look, now, Mindy, we’re in sort of a hurry here, we … how’s that? Naw. What would I be doing with a ladder?”
He listened a while longer. “Yeah, well,” he said. “First left after the … sure. Sure I got it, I ain’t that stupid. Okay. Bye.”
He hung up and dug his fingers into his hair. “Shoot,” he said.
“What’s the matter?”
“First she says she can’t get free today, wants me to come at midnight instead and fetch her down a ladder. A ladder! I tell you, sometimes that Mindy is so … and when I say no, she says then maybe she’ll meet me at six tomorrow morning. Maybe, maybe not. What is she playing at now?”
“I would think a ladder would be sort of … risky,” I said.
“You don’t know Mindy, that’s just the kind of thing she admires,” he said. “I’m surprised she don’t want me charging up on a horse.”
We left the booth and went into the grocery store. Jake chose a Gillette, a can of lather, a giant bottle of Coke, and a bag of Doritos. I saw a freezer full of orange juice and developed a craving for some, but he said it would be too much trouble to mix. He was very short-tempered, I thought. He cruised the aisles, muttering to himself, hurrying me along whenever I slowed down. “Come on, come on, we ain’t got all night.”
“The way I see it, all night’s just what we do have,” I said.
“This is not the time to start acting smart,” he told me.
After we’d finished in the grocery store we drove on through Linex, which had turned a silvery color now that the sun was down. We traveled so far I wondered if we were going for good, giving up on Mindy. I thought that would be fine. (Even leaving someone else’s loved one could fill me with a kind of wicked joy.) But then Jake slowed the car and peered at the woods to his right. He said, “This here will have to do, I guess.” A brown wooden sign spelled out TUNSAQUIT KAMP-GROUNDS in chiseled letters. We turned onto a dirt road and bounced along, passing an empty bulletin board, a Johnny-on-the-Spot, and several trashcans. Finally the road ended. Jake stopped the car and slumped back. “Well,” I said. “Yeah, well,” he said.
He rolled down the window. This deep in the woods it was already twilight, and a mushroom-smelling chill hit us like a faceful of damp leaves. He rolled the window up again. “I thought at least they’d have picnic tables,” he said.
“Maybe we could try further on.”
“Nah.”
I pulled my raincoat around me but Jake just sat there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Finally I reached into the grocery bag and opened the Doritos. “Have some,” I said. He shook his head. I took a handful myself and ate them one by one. “They’re good,” I told him. “Try and see.”
“I ain’t hungry.”
“If we just had that orange juice they’d be perfect.”
“Now, how’d we mix orange juice way off here in the woods? Besides, I had to watch the money. We’re almost out.”
“If you’re watching the money, why’d you buy the razor?” I said. “I’d rather have orange juice.”
“Well, I would rather have a shave,” said Jake. He straightened up and checked his face in the mirror. “Death Row Jethro,” he said, and sank back. “She’d take one look and run. I can’t abide not shaving.”
“I can’t abide not eating fruit,” I told him. “I just have this craving; I believe I’m getting scurvy.”
“Will you quit that? Will you just stop dwelling on a thing?”
I quit. I ate some more Doritos and looked at the woods. Once I got used to the bareness—slick brown needled floor, color washed out in the dusk—I thought it was sort of pleasant here. But Jake was so restless. He started crackling through the grocery bag. He took some Doritos after all and then brought out the Coke bottle, unscrewed the top, and sent a fine warm spray over both of us. “Oops. Sorry,” he said.
“That’s all right.”
“Have a drink.”
“No, thanks.”
“If you like,” he said, “you can sleep in the back tonight. I ain’t sleeping anyhow. I plan to just sit here and go crazy.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t see how you stand this,” he said.
“You forget,” I told him, “I’ve been married.”
We sat there munching Doritos, watching the trees grow taller and blacker as night came on.
10
I first left my husband in 1960, after an argument ove
r the furniture. This was Alberta’s furniture that he’d stored instead of selling, for some reason, back when he sold her house. We hadn’t been married a month when he hired a U-Haul and brought everything home with him: her rickety bedroom suites, linoleum-topped table and worn-out chairs, her multicolored curtains and shawls and dresses … add to this her father-in-law’s belongings as well, all the props and costumes the old man had stashed in the dining room. Well, I thought Saul meant to hold a garage sale or something. Certainly I saw that we couldn’t go on paying the storage bills. But it seemed he had no such intention. He kept it, every bit of it. The house was overstuffed as it was, so he had to double things up: an end table in front of another end table, a second sofa backed against the first. It was crazy. Every piece of furniture had its shadow, a Siamese twin. My mother didn’t seem to find it odd at all (she doted on him now, she thought he could do no wrong) but I did. He wouldn’t even open Alberta’s letters; what did he want with her furniture?
I myself thought of Alberta daily, and had coveted all she owned for years, but these were just her cast-offs. If she had managed to fling them away, so could I. “Saul,” I said, “we have to get rid of this clutter. I can’t move. I can’t breathe! It’s got to go.”
“Oh, we’ll sort it out eventually,” was what he said.
I believed him. I continued stumbling over crates of satin shoes and riding boots, bruising my shins in the tangle of chair legs, waiting for him to take some action. But then he started Bible College and became so preoccupied. At night he was studying, and any spare time he had was given to the radio shop. It was plain he’d forgotten that furniture utterly.
Along about October, I decided to dispose of it myself. I admit it: I went behind his back. I didn’t call Goodwill in an open and aboveboard way that he would notice but snuck things out, piece by piece, and set them by the trashcan. The truck came by on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Wednesday I put out a nightstand, Saturday a bookcase. I couldn’t discard more than one thing at a time because the town had a limit on bulk trash. This made me very impatient. I lay awake planning what to get rid of next; it was so hard to choose. The bureau? Or the end table? Part of me wanted to work my way through the kitchen chairs, but there were eight of them and that would be so boring, week after week. Part of me wanted to head straight for the sofa, the biggest thing in the house. But surely he would notice that. Wouldn’t he?