They picked six things, and matched the materials to the dresses they chose. Sylvan undressed down to her slip, and Claudie took all her measurements.
“You have a good behind for clothes,” Claudie said at one point.
Sylvan laughed. “Big,” she said. “At least it’s good for something besides sitting.”
“All us colored women all have big butts,” Claudie said.
“Why is that?”
“Clothes fit better. And the men like it.”
“Do you have a man?”
“Men don’t like me. These men around here, they don’t want a strong woman with her own money and her own car. I might run off on ’em.” She laughed. “Probably would, too, if I had anywhere to go.”
It took all afternoon. By sunset, there were plans for twelve dresses, and Claudie already knew she’d never be paid enough for all the work she was going to put into them. But she didn’t care.
That was the great thing about Claudie. She just didn’t give a damn.
CHAPTER TEN
CHARLIE BEALE NEEDED a house to live in. The nights wouldn’t stay warm forever, and Alma wanted him to have a roof over his head before the days got short. He wanted to live in the country, but she wanted him in town, near the shop, said he’d get too lonely out by himself, even though Charlie said he was never lonely and liked the quiet. She wanted him to be able to stroll down to work, to water his lawn after dinner the way the other men and women did, to be a part of it all.
To Alma, there was no end to the wonder, the delight of being in town. She had grown up far out in the country, a family of twelve and even though she liked it when they drove out there to visit her sisters and brothers, nothing beat town. She liked hearing her neighbors’ voices on their porches at night, hated hearing the occasional arguments, late at night, from upstairs, the voices so close you could hear what the argument was about.
It wasn’t very hard to find a house for Charlie. There were only three for sale in the town, and one was too big and one was too small, so that left one. Alma picked it, even though Charlie said the smaller one would be enough, she insisted, saying that he’d find a girl and then have a family and outgrow the smaller one and have to move to one of the other ones, anyway.
He paid cash for it, the way he paid for everything. Eighteen hundred dollars for three bedrooms and two bathrooms and a big wide porch that wrapped around the front and the sides. The trees in the yard were big and old, eight feet around, and Alma said they would keep the house cool with shade and breeze, even if Charlie might miss the beauty of the sunrise out by the river.
He and Will painted some of the rooms, at night, after work, and Alma got a girl in to sweep and scrub the floors. Soon, Charlie Beale had the first real home he’d had in a long, long time.
In the weeks before school started, they’d drive around the county to auctions; there were always one or two every Saturday. They took two vehicles, Charlie and Will in the pickup, to bring home whatever things Alma picked out, and Alma and Sam in the old Buick. They parked side by side in dirt fields, and by the time she got out of the car, Alma was already running with excitement.
Charlie wasn’t used to the country auctioneers. He could never understand what they were saying in their rapid-fire singsong—it was like the country songs without the melody—but Alma would raise her hand when she saw something he needed, and keep it up until the auctioneer slammed the gavel down.
Ray Miller was always the auctioneer, and whatever didn’t sell, Ray would buy for pennies on the dollar. He kept it all in two big barns somewhere out near Glasgow, and he knew somehow that all this country stuff that people didn’t want today, milk-glass darning eggs and butter churns and whatnot, they’d come to want a few years down the road. They’d start to miss their grandmothers and grandfathers, the old ways, the home place, and they would fill the corners and knickknack shelves of their new houses with things that were familiar to them from their childhoods, even if the stuff had belonged to other people, other childhoods than their own.
Usually, they served lunch at these auctions, and they’d sit at long tables and eat Brunswick stew or hot dogs, while prim, sad-faced families watched from the porches of the houses they were soon to leave. They were festive and sad, those auctions, eager and mournful at the same time.
There wasn’t anything you couldn’t buy, if you thought you needed it. Beds and chairs and tables and rugs, of course, but also plates and glasses and sets of silverware, even good old sheets and mixing bowls and egg beaters and wooden spoons. A great find was an old pine blanket chest that turned out to have eight good quilts inside it.
People, some people, were already tired of the country, tired of living with the same stuff that had been in the house for generations. After the war, they wanted a clean sweep. There was a longing for the new, the modern, and a disregard, just beginning, for lives that had been lived in faithful seclusion, fathers and sons working the same land, climbing up and down the steep stairs their great-grandfathers had climbed, had sometimes even built by hand.
A whole hotel, Alum Springs, went out of business because people just didn’t believe any more in the curative powers of the waters, and Alma got for Charlie a whole set of heavy hotel silver, knives and forks and spoons for twelve, even if Charlie didn’t know twelve people in the whole town. She bought him a porch rocker for a dollar, and heavy maroon velvet curtains, everything he could need for setting up a kitchen, and rugs that ladies had walked on when their skirts still swept the floor.
There was even a grand piano, and Alma raised her hand to bid, but Charlie and Will begged her to stop—nobody played, no matter how beautiful it might be or even how cheap, so she stopped at thirty-four dollars. It went for forty-eight, and Alma settled instead for twelve huge bath towels with ALUM SPRINGS written on them, two dollars for the lot.
She had a vision for Charlie’s house that mystified the amused men. She wanted it not simply to house, but to attract, although who or what wasn’t quite clear. It was as though she already had a vision of who Charlie would become, and was outfitting his rooms so that a woman would feel at home when she arrived.
He moved in on the last Friday in September. Most of the furniture was already there, but Will and Charlie worked all day, putting the pieces where Alma told them to. They opened all the tall windows, and the warm Indian summer air blew through the house, the men with dark sweat rings under their arms as they lugged sofas and armoires from one room to another.
Charlie picked out a bedroom, not the biggest one, but facing east, so he might still wake at the first light of dawn and smell the first breeze of the day. Alma laid out the linen sheets on the bed, tucking the corners tightly so the sheets wouldn’t get all tangled up in the night. She put on the bed one of the strongest and brightest of the quilts, a pattern called Crown of Thomas, even though Charlie wouldn’t need it for weeks and weeks, just to add some color to the room.
As he worked, Will smiled and sang the verses of one of the mournful old songs over and over:
Oh, I wish I had someone to love me
Someone to call me their own
Oh, I wish I had someone to live with
’Cause I’m tired of living alone.
Finally Charlie told him to quit it, and Will did. But Alma still hummed it, forgetting, maybe, that however cheerful the melody, it was about going off to jail and dying, that song.
Now I have a grand ship on the ocean
All mounted in silver and gold
And before my poor darling would suffer,
Oh, that ship would be anchored and sold.
Mac Wiseman sang that song on the radio. It was a beautiful thing to hear.
Neighbors dropped by, bringing things, saying how glad they were that the house wasn’t empty any more. They brought lunch, egg salad sandwiches on rich, fluffy rolls, and potato chips, and Mason jars full of sweet tea with mint and lemon.
Betty Fowler from next door brought a potted chrysanthemum
, russet gold, a massive plant that spoke of fall and last bright fadings. She even picked out where to put it on the porch so it would catch the most light, telling Charlie to be sure to pinch the dead flowers every day, so more flowers would come in abundance. In the late afternoon light, they hung the swing on the porch, while Alma cooked dinner in the pots and pans from the old hotel.
When they were done, they were worn out from lifting in the heat, but it felt good, as though a complicated thing had been done almost by accident. They sat down at the dark table in the dining room and ate Alma’s cooking, the first meal in Charlie’s new house.
After supper, Charlie sat on his own porch with his own best friends, the lights on all up and down the street, watching his neighbors as they watched him, his voice joining with theirs as the people of the town sat and discussed and scolded one another for minor infractions of this or that nature, and the children played catch in the empty street.
“I’ve got a question,” said Will.
“Shoot.” Charlie sipped his tea and rocked while the others swung gently to and fro in the porch swing.
“How’d you get to be a butcher?”
“Accident, I guess. I worked in a grocery store after school when I was . . .”
“Where was that?”
“Will,” Alma laid her hand on his. “Let the man talk.”
“Back home. I was sixteen. You know, bagging groceries and such. Then the manager moved me into the meat department, the last thing I wanted. I liked meat. I just didn’t want to put my hands on it. But I did, because that’s the kind of boy I was then. I pretty much did as I was told.
“And I got to like it. I figured, if you’re going to eat it, you might as well know where it comes from, so I studied up, learned where all the cuts were, learned how to cut clean and fair. I learned how to slaughter the animals, learned to walk up to them so they trusted me and they weren’t afraid, so they didn’t release any chemicals that make the meat tough.
“By the time I was twenty, I was the head butcher in another store. A big store. That’s when I got my knives. Cost a lot, came all the way from Germany.
“But, to tell you the truth, I haven’t done it in a while.”
“Since then?”
“Things happened. Other things I hadn’t counted on. But it’s like riding a bicycle. If you learn something early, and you learn it well, you don’t forget.”
“That’s enough, Will,” Alma shushed him. “Don’t push so hard.” Then they just sat for a while in silence, rocking, the white smoke from Charlie’s Lucky Strike floating like a ghost in the air, the boy quiet and tired on his mother’s lap. Such a simple country quiet in the air, in the softness of the dark street, the porch lights on, the last moths of summer flittering into and out of the bright ring that hung above them, where the people of the town rocked and smoked and slept and talked in quiet voices.
When it was dark, the fireflies rose off Charlie’s own front yard, and bats wheeled and circled the eaves of his house and in the dark, heavy branches of his trees. Charlie felt a mixture of freedom and imprisonment he hadn’t felt in a long, long time.
Then they did the dishes, Alma washing, the men drying, while Sam sleepily wandered around the new house, touching every single thing, asking when Beebo was going to get a radio, where the Christmas tree was going to go, asking what had happened to the people who had lived there before. When the dishes were done, Alma showed Charlie where everything was stored, put away neat as a pin, scrubbed clean and ready to use.
Sam was tired, and Will picked him up, wheezing, “I’m getting too old for this,” and they said their good nights, nodding, not touching, and left Charlie alone for his first night in his new house. Charlie closed the door behind him when they left, and took satisfaction in the fact that, when he walked through his rooms, the house didn’t sound hollow, and it didn’t sound new. It sounded already lived in.
That first night in his new house, he sat on the porch after supper, his porch light off, smoking a Lucky Strike and watching as the lights of the other porches went off as well, until there was only one left, across the street and down one, Old Mrs. Entsminger, sitting on her porch in a rocker, a shawl around her shoulders, her grandson at her feet on a stool with a fiddle to his chin.
The boy played eight notes, and the old lady began to sing in the high mountain voice they all used. There was such sadness in her quavering voice, such hope in the words she sang. She had been singing the same song since she was a girl younger than her grandson.
The water is wide
I can’t cross o’er
And neither have
I wings to fly
Build me a boat
That can carry two
And both shall row
My love and I.
Such a sad sweetness, a sweet sadness that was born in the mountain and crept down into the valley like a gentle fog. She drifted off, it seemed, to sleep or memory, but the boy played on, and when he had played another verse through, she opened her eyes and patted his head. “Finish it, Henry,” she said, “Take us home.”
He was a boy; he was eleven, or twelve, his voice not yet changed. Still he had the music in him, and he sang the words that were far older than he would ever be, and what he sang filled and changed Charlie’s heart.
Oh love is handsome
And love is fine
The sweetest flower
When first it’s new
But love grows old
And waxes cold
And fades away
Like summer dew.
How could he know, the boy, and, knowing, how could he sing? But he knew. His child’s voice didn’t mean he did not know, and Charlie knew, too, knew a thing that he had not remembered for a long time.
The boy’s voice trailed off. He helped his grandmother to her feet and into the house, their porch light went off, the last one of the night. Then Charlie went indoors and closed the door behind him, locking it, he knew for no reason. He climbed the stairs, a glass of whiskey in his hand, and undressed and lay in his bed and sipped the whiskey. Alma had told him never to smoke in bed, but he did anyway. The linen sheets were old and heavy without being hot, and they felt good on his body. He was small in the big four-poster Alma had chosen for him.
Whiskey done, he said his prayers, remembering, as he always did, the name and face of every person he had ever loved. Before turning out the light, he picked up his diary, spit on the end of a pencil, and turned to September 30, 1948, and wrote: Home. 126 Main Street, Brownsburg, Virginia, USA.
He closed the book and arranged the pillows so that nothing touched his body while he slept. But smooth and arrange as he might, hearing the soft whir of his new fan from Sears, he couldn’t sleep. He tried for three hours, and then he gave up. So Charlie Beale got out of bed, remaking it as neatly as a nurse, and got dressed and went out and started his truck, the only sound on the street.
He drove out to his land by the river, and spread out his quilt on the ground. He was asleep in five minutes, while the silver river fish swam through his dreams.
He woke up with the first light of a new day in his eyes.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THERE WERE TWO things Charlie Beale wanted, and neither one was a woman.
The first thing he wanted was a dog. He said it wasn’t so much that he himself wanted a dog, although deep down in his heart he felt that if you had a house you ought to have a dog, but that Sam wanted a dog and couldn’t have one. That boy talked about it every single day, bringing it up time after time as though it had never been discussed before. He knew every dog on the street by name, and there was a kind of mournful, tender wonder in his eyes every time he put his hand on a dog’s head to pat it.
The second thing was land. Charlie wanted to amass acreage the way boys collect baseball cards or young men collect broken-down cars, hoping to take the parts and put them all together one day into a sleek, fast, girl-attracting ride.
Maybe it was b
ecause Charlie wasn’t a big man and wanted the armor that land would provide him. Or maybe because it was that, for so long, he had lacked a sense of place, of belonging. It was beautiful, this land in the Valley of Virginia, and Charlie hungered for beauty.
Obviously, one thing was a small thing and the other one was a big thing. But both dogs and land were everywhere around him, and at least he knew exactly which dog he wanted, the dog he thought Sam might like, because he’d seen Andy Myers’s place on one of his many drives around the county when he first got there.
Andy Myers had more dogs than children, and he had a gang of children. He bred both for use and pleasure, the dogs to hunt and sit by his feet in the evening, and the children for chores. The beagles were brindled and content, the children freckled and happy with their lot.
Charlie drove out there and looked over the new dogs, a twelve-week-old litter.
“You hunt?” Andy asked him.
“Don’t,” Charlie said. “Not against it. I just never got the idea of killing for pleasure.”
“I kill to eat.”
“Well, see, that’s sort of my business,” Charlie said, looking at the squirming mass of puppies around his feet. He loved their spots, and the colors splashed on their skins, honey and black and white, the way their tongues hung from their mouths. He felt like he was five years old again, just picking out his first dog. “I’m a butcher by trade, and I never go hungry.”
“I don’t sell house dogs, or yard dogs. I sell hunting dogs.”
“He can go hunting with Will Haislett.”
“Oh, you a friend of Will’s? His mother was my mother’s second cousin. I don’t know what that makes him and me, but his people and my people are buried in the same graveyard, so I guess that makes us family. Sure, you can have a dog. Male or female? There’s both.”
“I want that one, the strong one, the male.”
“He’ll make a good hunting dog. I was thinking of keeping that one for myself.” But Charlie figured that’s what Andy always said, just to get another dollar or two.