Now at the same house he drew up slowly at the curb, in the shade of the sycamores, and alighted heavily from his car, hot and sweaty and with a sort of hopeful despair on his round, friendly face, but with more despair than hope.
“Oh, please. Dear Jesus, wake up now.” Some voice lilting and sorrowful, distantly arousing her from the hot solacing heart of sleep. And her shoulder. What was that trembling at her shoulder? Hot, too, the five-fingered grasp upon her arm, yet tender, drawing away the last rags of darkness, urging her to light, toward which she struggled, eyelids fluttering, reluctantly. “Wake up now, Miss Helen, oh, Lawd God, Miss Helen, I got de word about it … now there.”
La Ruth hovered above, her face an enormous black ugly mask, suffering, shedding streams of tears. “Miss Helen, de reverend’s downstairs waitin on to take you to de cemetery, he say.” She stood beside the bed, Helen watching her drowsily—the hulking, misshapen form still bending forward in apprehension—watching her from the grief-filled bespectacled eyes to the huge, formless legs draped in stockings that had skidded about and hung in folds around the knees, and the transparent, water-stained skirt.
“Oh, Lawd, Miss Helen, I been pushin at you all dis time and you wouldn’t rouse up, I thought you was dead, too——” And drew back then with a gasp, a cry of horror and grief. “God knows, Miss Helen, I’nt meant to say dat! Gret God, Miss Helen, Mama come home an’ tol’ me ‘bout po’ little Peyton last night and directly I fell down on my knees and spoke up fo’ you, prayin fo’ de divine intersection of precious Daddy Faith an’ says wing down yo’ angels to pick up de sperit of po’ little Peyton and leave yo’ chosen dearest one right here on earth to take keer of po’ little Peyton’s mama who——”
“La Ruth,” Helen interrupted, sitting up, “go get me a glass of cold water.” A raw feverish film covered her throat; her voice, these first words, came hoarsely.
“Yes’m. Oh, yes, ma’am.” La Ruth stood there motionless, with grasshopper eyes, touched with dim, blossoming wonder at this victim of tragedy who, not once but twice now bereft of motherhood, could suffer so stoically and wake up from a hot day’s sleep like this without hysteria. She herself had lost two of her three children and although she couldn’t rightly place the father of either of them she could recall with what fright she had awakened for many days afterward, shrieking, blubbering crazily for God to send down his Apostle. Quick. To lead her not into paths of Belief (because she believed, anyway, with every part of her soul and body) but into paths of peace and grace, into Baptism, into the true waters that would wash and caress her worn-out body and flood away the various sorrows of her mind, which always sought dreamily for a man. And soon God had not just sent his Apostle, but had come himself, in a Cadillac, to make sure everything was all right no matter how much she had worked and sinned, no matter the children she had lost: Daddy Faith, who was the King of Glory, Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. That had been ten years ago, and all this time she had cherished him and loved him and, having contributed over four hundred dollars to his cause, had become an Outer Angel of the Port Warwick annex heaven, detached from Baltimore. Today was Daddy Faith’s annual August Coming, and she had worked herself up into a fever of excitement, so perhaps could be excused for this sudden evangelism. Helen stirred, placed her feet shakily on the floor and looked up once more into La Ruth’s stricken face that pleaded for understanding—that tried to tell her that she, Helen, too, was qualified for the million, billion, trillion, septidemicillion blessings, blessings flowing free for all that slaved and sweated and were acquainted with grief, or had ever just lost a darling baby child. “Po’ Miss Helen,” she said.
A car passed on the road. Helen looked at her wrist watch: it was just before noon. A hot odor filled her nostrils, a smell of body, crotch and armpit, like onions. “I just want a glass of water,” Helen repeated in a weary voice.
“Yes’m. Po’ thing. I sho’ will git it for you. You just wait right there——” She hurried ponderously out of the room, and her huge flat-footed descent of the stairs, even from the distance, set the mirror rattling faintly, like the passing of remote boxcars.
While she was gone, Helen went to the head of the stairs and called down. “Carey! Carey!”
“Yes, Helen!” The voice floating up from the hall tried to be cheerful, lifted and fell in soft spaced syllables, rocking between professional solicitude and earnest, far-away sadness. “Are you—are you all right? Is there anything I can do? We’d better go soon. Is there anything I can do?”
Poor Carey, she thought. Such a dear, such a real dear, always trying to do the right thing.
“I’ll be right down,” she called. “I’ve got to get dressed.”
In her room she spied the withered dahlias. She threw them in the wastebasket, then went into the bathroom and poured the stale water into the lavatory. As she dressed, the plodding elephantine footsteps echoed once more, ascending this time, and La Ruth appeared, with a glass of water isolated upon the vast expanse of a flowe ed enamel tray. “Dere, ain’t dat nice?” she said. “All nice and cold and everything. You just set down for a minute and drink it all up—you look hot, Miss Helen.”
“Thank you, La Ruth,” she said. And indeed it was hot. Nothing disturbed the quiet; the holly leaves outside the window were motionless, reflecting brilliant tinfoil shapes of light. Beyond the trees and down the lawn the bay was slick and calm, without color, and in the sky, where only a solitary gull dared to soar through the heat, dusty gray vapor hung like a colossal balloon above the bay, threatening to unloose its dismal baggage of rain and wind. Helen powdered her face, covering up as best she could the lines and wrinkles there, and sat down—just for a breather, she thought—wondering if she could make it at all. The medicine, a sedative which she had taken two hours before, made her feel groggy and she was on edge, her nerves all raw. She longed for a cigarette—but Dr. Holcomb had said no. She sipped the water slowly and then, when the glass was empty, placed it on the window ledge, watching her frosty thumbprints fade and vanish, silver ghosts of snails contracting inward upon some sightless wonderland infinity. The floor creaked beneath La Ruth abruptly; Helen looked up.
“Miss Helen,” she said, in an earnest voice, “I ain’t got no mo’ning clothes. Mama she tol’ me today befo’ she come over here fo’ me to git some mo’ning clothes from Sister Alberta Lemmon dat lives by de Bankhead Magruder place but when I went by there Sister Alberta she done left to go down to de Little Boat Harbor where Daddy Faith praise his name is holding preleminary ce’monies fo’ de baptisin’ tonight. Sister Alberta, she’s an Inner Angel——”
“That’s all right, La Ruth,” Helen put in. “You don’t need mourning clothes.” She looked up into the scowling face, at the bulging eyes, which were bespectacled, still moist with a grief that seemed to embrace the entire world; the pink lower lip protruding a full inch outward, forever exposed to the wind and sun, ravaged by strange, livid runnels and gullies, now inexplicably filled Helen with something deeper than despair. She got up quickly. “You don’t need mourning clothes,” she blurted, with a sort of sob, and turned. “Oh, God, it’s hot! What am I going to do?”
“I tried my best,” La Ruth continued doggedly, in a pleading tone. “Mama she tol’ me if’n Sister Alberta had gone on down to de Little Boat Harbor to go by see Sister Moreen at de Crystal Auto Sto’——”
“Oh, La Ruth!”
“Yes’m.”
“Just don’t say anything else.”
“Yes’m.”
Helen sat down again, trying to summon up, out of her infinite weariness, strength, and the courage to face Carey: he’ll no longer tell me about God or Milton. I know now about it all. I know. I’ll get by his silly, sweet persuasions. …
“Get me my umbrella. It’s in the closet where the luggage is.”
“Yes’m.” The enormous buttocks reared before her as La Ruth bent down, the faded skirt hiked high, revealing fat maho
gany limbs and the sandy crater of a vaccination scar. “Seems like it’s down here somewhere, if only I gets to it,” the muffled voice went on, and then, triumphantly, holding up the umbrella, and easing gradually erect with pain and fitful, forgetful mumblings. “Dis yere one’s black, too, like it should be. Mmm-hh, my back! Lookee yere, I’ll wipe it all off for you right yere with dis old rag. Dis is a real nice umbrella, Miss Helen.” And then down the endless tunnel of her mind, without tributary, where no thought could diverge or change, but only link with a sister-thought like elephants trunk-to-tail, she battened solemnly upon umbrellas and continued in a soft high voice: “Daddy Faith he got a umbrella dat he carries in his auto wid him ev’ywhere he go. Some folks say dat de stones on it’s real diamonds. I don’t know but——”
And moreover, she was thinking, he’ll say that this is an inhuman, low thing, unworthy of my place in the sun, before God. That I should be so cold. And when he called me this morning he was shocked: Oh, Helen I don’t know what to say. Oh, Helen it’s the saddest thing. Oh, Helen I know about you and Peyton. Oh, Helen you must come today. Anyhow. Well, for my sake, Helen dear. Oh, Helen, have you thought of Milton? Oh, Helen he wants you now. Don’t you see? Oh, Helen, salvation, it’s all you have, don’t you see? And oh Helen this and oh Helen that. And … oh hell!
Ha! Oh hell.
But what was this now? Somehow deflected from umbrellas, La Ruth had approached her, arms outstretched, miraculously contriving a new thought: “Lawd, Miss Helen,” she whined, “ ‘deed if I knowed yo’ misery I’d of come last night but Mama she didn’t tell me ’bout it till real late ’cause I was washin‘ clothes over at Mrs. Massie’s.” She paused, swallowed hard. And now, shocking Helen, echoing Carey: “Oh, Miss Helen, Mama she tol’ me dat what you need is Cap’n Milton back. Fo’ to keep you on dis lovin’ earth, ‘cause Mama say po’ thing now with yo’ chillun flown up to de bosom of God you needs to bide out yo’ days with a dear sweet man. Gret God, Miss Helen—” her voice rose and descended on the hot air, like a cello—“Mama say ‘take him back, take him back,’ ‘cause, po’ man, bein a man he’s de sinful kind and cain’t help it, an’ last night while she was here she heard de moanin and de groanin he made and it was de pitifullest sound in dis world, dat’s what Mama say.”
“La Ruth!” Helen arose, but the woman wouldn’t stop, grasping her convulsively, and Helen could feel the scaly calluses of her palm.
“Mamma say ever since you come back from up there where po’ little Maudie passed away, dat Cha’lottesville——”
Charlottesville. Oh, dear God, keep that out of my mind.
Still the hard callused clutch, and sweat—a Negro touching her. “She say ever since dat time you was fallin by de wayside yo’self and not seekin Jesus and all de jizzum run clean on out of you someways.”
“Get your——” Helen, startled, tried to pull away, but behind those greasy spectacles the eyes, always so full of muddled despair, had in them now, beneath a film of blood-flecked moisture, the shine of revelation: “Lookee yere, Miss Helen, I had three men run away from me. All my life I done what was right and all dis runnin’ away left me pretty near soured. Now come a day when my chillun flown off wid de angels and Gret God did I grieve, cryin’ all de time and I couldn’t move it was so hard on me, like I been clobbered on de head wid a hatchet. Den I would pray for de ‘Postle and if’n dat didn’t work for dear Jesus just to please send me my man back so’s I could git me my lovin’ even if dat was de onliest thing I could git.”
She halted and let her hand fall away. Helen watched her. La Ruth was looking out of the window, breathing hoarsely, and the glow faded from her eyes then; this brief effort to make Helen understand about love and death and men and such things had been too much for her. No memory could stir her now; as if the familiar veil had been drawn over her mind and eyes, her face became relaxed and dumb again: now most likely the years could issue up only a remembrance of backaches, fleeting spasms of love which meant nothing anymore, even in memory, the endless immolation. Almost. For her voice, this time in one last try, was wheedling and timid and high-pitched, and trailed off like water trickling down a gutter: “Mama says ever sence dat weddin’ you wouldn’t have no truck wid him. Like it was his fault or po’ little Peyton’s. Miss Helen, Mama says dat ain’t right. Take him back,’ she says, ‘take him back,’ for de Lawd’s sake——”
“Shut up, La Ruth,” Helen cried. “Be quiet!” And then, while the day itself seemed to be gathering huge, hidden forces at her back, like a tidal wave of heat threatening to pour over her, she rushed past La Ruth into the cooler hallway, saying aloud, “Oh, I can’t stand this! I can’t!” And again, “La Ruth, my umbrella!”
“Yes’m.” La Ruth followed her downstairs with thundering footsteps, and, below, Carey was waiting with his white straw hat in his hand and on his face a horrid little smile.
“Helen.” He held out his hand. “I’m so sorry. I’m——”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t be.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t try,” she said, sighing. “Oh, it’s so hot!” And thought, Indeed if I consider Charlottesville that will be all. Which is worse, past or future? Neither. I will fold up my mind like a leaf and drift on this stream over the
Brink. Which will be soon, and then the dark, and then be done with this ugliness …
“Oh, it is hot,” he was saying, behind her now, “I’m so sorry, so sorry.”
“So sorry,” she repeated, bending over to adjust her stocking, which Carey noticed was exposed far above her knee, the thigh blue-veined beneath, spindly. He turned away, blushing. Oh, dear God, he thought.
“Helen, dear,” he said softly, “we’d better hurry. It’s almost time.” How ugly she’s become. After everything. Like a ghost. “We’d better hurry,” he said again, “it’s almost time.”
“Yes,” she said. She let the hem of her skirt fall and stood up.
La Ruth handed her the umbrella. “Take him back,” she said.
“I have an extra raincoat,” Carey said, “you can use mine.”
“Dear Lawd bless you,” La Ruth whispered, weeping, “take him back, like Mama say.”
“We’d better hurry, Helen dear, it’s almost time.”
Carey opened the door for her and she took his arm, clasping it to her side.
“By-by, Miss Helen.”
“I’ll see this through,” she said to Carey sternly, and then, peering intently into his eyes as they went down the porch steps: “The end is upon us. There’s no use to——” She didn’t finish.
What? Carey thought. Against his wrist her hand felt thin and cold. Above them, as they got into the car, the sun, unwavering, passed its summit, sank toward the long afternoon.
5
THE hearse and limousine had passed through the center of town and now, in the western outskirts, it seemed as if there would be little traffic on the highway which led to the cemetery, six miles away. This fact was a matter of considerable relief to Mr. Casper and to Loftis, also—though perhaps to a lesser extent. Loftis had to keep his mind off what was going to happen, and it was curious, he noticed, with what concentration he followed each stop, each turn of the hearse ahead as it passed the landmarks of the town, and with what dread he watched the hearse balk at the stoplights, smoke spewing from the hood. If the hearse broke down Loftis knew that he’d be unable to bear it. He’d have to run away, through the streets, crying out his agony at the top of his voice or, if it happened later on the highway, through the woods, the marsh, perhaps falling down himself, finally, in some thicket, to hide his eyes mercifully from the sun. As a matter of fact, there had been a ghastly moment when in the midst of the noon-hour traffic the hearse did stop, completely. It happened just as the two vehicles had blundered into a long line of cars drawn up behind a stoplight at Thirty-fourth Street and Virginia Avenue. There had been no reason for this, actually, because Mr. Casper had told Barclay, not once but thre
e times, to take the less-crowded route through Niggertown. But here they were, utterly stalled. Barclay ground away on the starter, but the hearse didn’t move, and from all sides came the noise of car horns, irreverent and frantic in the noonday heat. At that moment an audible sound of despair had come from the limousine. It was as if the heat and the grief and the tension had all found a voice in the ferocious blatting of horns around them; and each person in the car also made a little noise. There was nothing maudlin about these sounds; they were too spontaneous, and they came from the very heart of pain: Dolly wept anew, Loftis gasped and covered his eyes with his hand, and Ella made a low sob or sigh, hard to define, which began low in her chest and built up on a soft, high, drawn-out note of grief ending on the word “Jesus.”
As for Mr. Casper, he said, “Damnation,” beneath his breath and got out of the limousine. Barclay emerged from the hearse, shaken and nervous, and a policeman came up, inquiring politely (he alone, it seemed, of all the pedestrians and motorists, had sensed the delicacy of the situation) as to what was wrong, and why, and could he help. It was fortunate, too, that he did arrive, for he was the one who got the hearse started. Barclay tried again, then Mr. Casper, and finally the policeman: it was an old trick, he murmured, that he had learned driving trucks with the Army in Italy. He was a young man, very sunburned and very efficient, and he merely depressed the clutch and pulled the hand throttle all the way out before pressing the starter, and the engine began to turn over nobly. Mr. Casper thanked him kindly, gave Barclay a dirty look and hustled back to the limousine.
Now on the highway things seemed a little better, and they rode on in silence. The pinewoods swept past; the sky was blue and brilliant, with thunderheads rising enormously on the horizon. Loftis had run out of cigarettes and he knew Dolly had some, but so much did he want to have nothing else to do with her—nothing, nothing, he kept saying to himself—that he refused to ask her for one, and only sat and suffered. Mr. Casper, it occurred to him, was not the type to smoke.