Silence was everywhere: Ella, sounds in the kitchen, hammering from the barracks, the noise of bumblebees—all these had disappeared and they were sitting alone and quiet in the canebrake, waiting, hardly breathing. Sunlight streamed down endlessly; it seemed to come from another land.
Presently Helen said, “Look, Maudie, there they are,” and they saw them: two ships, galleons with great pink sails. Then she said, “Listen, Maudie.” They listened, heard high above like pipes the shrilling of a thousand gulls. She said, “Do you see them, Maudie?”
“Yes, Mamadear.”
Then they looked through the canebrake and saw the sails dip and belly and pass on toward the river, twin flares of pink against the sky: no cities beyond, no smoke at all, no voices, only these passing galleons and the swell and dip of sails; they went away. They closed their eyes again, and she squeezed Maudie’s hand. They looked up. “Yes, Mamadear,” she said. Everything was as it had always been. Then they’d go to sleep.
Men were building the barracks next door. All summer long, and in the fall, they’d hear hammering and banging in the field. At first they could see the workers, but then the mimosas bloomed; it was hard to see. In the beginning those people didn’t have any water, and Helen had Ella take them some every afternoon in a pail. They were rough men who talked loudly, profanely: they had tanned faces and muddy shoes; in the afternoons they could hear their swearwords and Maudie asked her what it was they said. She said, “Hush, Maudie dear, that’s not for you.”
So they’d sit and watch and listen. Ella would go out at three, carrying her pail. From the porch they’d watch her limp off across the lawn, slopping water over, with one hand shooing flies from her hair. Beneath the mimosas the men would flock like cows, leaning over the fence; Ella had a paper cup for each of them. After they had drunk Ella would bring back the empty pail. One day Maudie said, “Mamadear, can I take the water, too?” Helen said, “Yes, darling, if you’re careful. If you go with Ella.”
The summer passed. The leaves began to turn and all along the fence the mimosas bloomed; the bumblebees still buzzed around the flowers. Each afternoon Helen would watch them walk across the lawn together very slowly, Ella carrying the pail, Maudie the paper cups. Both of them hobbling along: it was, Helen recollected, a sight in this world to watch. Soon they’d disappear behind the trees and she’d look away and go back to her knitting or reading, thinking of the strange things that made Maudie happy.
Helen paused in her story.
“If you knew,” she said. “If either of you knew just what tiny little things …” Her voice trailed off. No one spoke. In the silence she turned toward the window, her eyes musing steadily upon the darkness, upon remembered sunlight, remembered leaves, something: they didn’t know. A smile came to her lips but vanished, and she turned again, pointing at them.
She said something about a man named Bennie. His name was Bennie. At least Maudie called him Bennie. Helen saw him only once. Sometimes they were gone for a long time, Maudie and Ella. She’d sit and watch and listen, waiting for them to return. Perhaps they’d be gone for half an hour. Helen would fidget a little and worry, smelling steam from the kitchen. Finally she’d get up and walk across the lawn to the path through the garden. Right here the mimosas were in bloom; she’d stoop down and pick up the leaves which had fallen in the flower bed, calling at first, “Ella, Ella.” Then, “Ella, Ella,” she’d say more loudly, “Ella, you’d better bring Maudie back; she’s been standing up too long.” Then she’d hear a man laughing, and Maudie’s voice and Ella’s and Maudie’s again: “Good-by, good-by,” she’d say, and the two of them would come stumbling with a crashing noise out of the bushes, like those wild animals in the movies, both of them laughing and giggling. And she’d hear Ella say, “Dat man sho’ is some man,” in a marveling voice.
Then, with Ella helping her, Maudie would come up to Helen, her face red from giggling, and repeat just what Ella had said: “Mama-dear, that man is sure some man.”
“What man is that?” Helen would ask.
“That man in there with magic,” Maudie would say.
“That’s nice,” she’d say. “What’s his name, darling?”
“Bennie,” she’d answer.
Helen saw him only once. He was a thin little man of maybe forty, with a sad, dark, pock-marked face and black hair raked straight back from his forehead. He wore a red silk shirt and Ella told her he was part colored, part Indian: she could tell. Now each afternoon when they’d sit on the terrace she could hardly make Maudie rest long enough. She’d talk to her, tell her stories, but Maudie would stir and move about and ask her if it was three. Now it was always Bennie. So they’d go at three, Maudie and Ella carrying the bucket and the cups, and Helen would sit and wait as she had before. She was alone then. Maudie was happy. Stronger. The telephone rang, but Helen never answered it. Who, she asked herself, wants to talk to silly women with their silly games? Her life had been prudent and dark. She’d sit alone watching the clouds and the children yards out in the bay, wading, digging up clams.
So, as she said, she saw him only once, which was enough; along with him Maudie would always be remembered. Who would think that she whose lips had been so dark and prudent would not be one to die of pure anguish when she saw this thing, or not grind her teeth and beat her head against the trees? No, it was the other way around. Helen guessed Maudie knew what love was, which (and here she pointed at them again) was more than they would know in a lifetime of looking. Maudie won, she said, and thank God dying would be no more fearsome for her than going to sleep.
She supposed she should have been more careful, but she didn’t know. After a while most of the workmen left, the barracks were up, and some of the soldiers moved in. But Maudie and Ella still carried water over, though no one needed water anymore: it was a kind of game with them after that, foolish and absurd, she thought, but so much fun for them that she didn’t care. Often Ella would leave and come back alone, and Helen would say, “Ella, you’d better stay and watch,” but Ella would wink and grin and say that it was all right, she’d go fetch her in a minute.
Once Helen waited for a long time. It looked like rain. She began to be worried. Across the bay the rain was coming down in gray wet sheets and the sailboats raced in to shore. The gulls were flying high above and over the land. She could hear the awning flapping; a piece of tarpaper tumbled end over end across the lawn; through the trees she could see the soldiers racing for shelter, eyes slanted back toward the sky. She got up and stood there for a moment, calling out.
“Maudie, Maudie,” she cried, “come on back now; it’s time, it’s time,” but there wasn’t any answer.
She went down the steps and across the lawn through the flower bed, and stood beneath the mimosa trees. The wind was blowing hard, but there was no thunder. The blossoms on the trees were flung out pink and green like jungle birds about to fly. Finally they let go, whirling upward, and disappeared. She called again, “Maudie, Maudie,” against the wind, but there was still no answer. She went to the mimosas, picking her way among the vines, the lilies that grew there, pushing away branches. The earth was spongy here; it smelled damp, and it was dark. She walked a little way down the fence until she finally saw them; then she stood behind a tree, watching.
He was doing tricks for her. He stood on the other side of the fence, a short ugly little man with a puny pock-marked face and black raked-back hair fluttering violently in the wind. His arms were raised above his head, skinny and straight and motionless like a man supplicating heaven and the sky; he made no sound, he didn’t smile, only his fingers moved: swiftly they clenched and unclenched; gay blue balls appeared in his palms, seemed to dance there for a moment, and just as quickly disappeared.
Helen held her breath. Rain had begun to fall. She watched Maudie and saw her laugh and clap her hands, and saw her suddenly reach up and grope at the air, as if she were trying to recover those vanishing balls. He let his arms fall then and stood looking at Maudie wit
h his sunken eyes sad and mysterious, his cheeks bulging like a rabbit’s. Maudie laughed and cheered. He turned his head and peered up at the sky; gray light had fallen over the shore and as he turned, with the wind tossing his hair and with his bulging eyes and cheeks and with this sudden bitter look of annoyance, so comical but at the same time somehow alarming and fearsome, he looked like the greatest magician on earth. Maudie cried out something. He turned. “Again!” she cried. Then, one by one, the balls popped from his mouth with a little click and tumbled away along the fence.
And it happened then, this thing Helen had been talking about; he did one more trick. He picked up the balls, scrabbling along beneath the fence; his red silk shirttail had come out, she remembered, and it flapped wildly behind him as he hopped around like a chipmunk picking up the balls. Then he turned and came toward Maudie. Up went the balls again; each vanished as he caught it: his hands were empty. They stood there looking at each other, and again there seemed to be something sad and mysterious in his gaze; he was like the old magician, old artificer from another country, and his eyes were black and tender: it was as if he had many secrets and somehow knew everything there was to know: not just those dancing balls but the earth and sky, leaves and wind and falling rain; he knew their sorcery, knew their mysteries, and he knew the secret heart of this girl he’d never even spoken to. Bennie. Could he talk? He never said a word. There was something in him that understood love and death, en twined forever, and the hollow space of mindlessness: he gazed at Maudie and didn’t smile, only reached out his hand and made a ball come out of her ear, another from her hair.
Maudie knew maybe, Helen said; no, she must have known. There was that silent, sad, mysterious communion; God alone knew how she foretold the coming end. Something in his eyes, perhaps: the defiant glance toward the heavens, a violent look, or—afterward—the rapt, mournful gaze he gave her, that told her that such divine magic must come to an end like everything. She cried and cried. He put the balls in his pocket and stood there quietly, looking at her. She kept on crying, loud and unreasoning and anguished, and said, “No! No!”
Wind swept through the trees, and rain, plastering down her hair; Helen couldn’t move. “No! No!” Maudie screamed. “No! No!” It was as if she had seen the end—not only of this afternoon but of all afternoons, of sunlight and the water she had brought, the dancing balls and of all and anything she had ever loved on earth. Of Bennie. She kept on shrieking. Helen thought she’d faint of horror.
“No! No!” Maudie screamed, and toppled weakly against the fence, stretching out her arms to him. But he didn’t move; he merely stood there with the rain drenching his shirt, deepening the red, and gazed at her steadily and unhappily, understanding. Helen started to move toward her, but he moved first, swiftly. He walked to the fence and propped Maudie back up. He said nothing at all. She became quiet and looked at him with tears streaming down her face. Then he put his arms around her and kissed her once on the cheek.
That, mostly, Helen said, she would always remember: the swaying mimosas and the two of them, she much taller than Bennie, standing with the fence between, holding on to each other. After all these years she’d found it: a lover, father, magic—something. Helen didn’t know. But Maudie had found it. He knew. Bennie knew. He stood erect finally and smoothed back his hair, looking at her. Maudie looked back, saying nothing either, only, with her eyes, imploring him to stay.
What could he do? Nothing, Helen knew. Just understanding was enough. He shoved his shirttail in and wheeled about and walked swiftly across the field through the rain and disappeared behind the barracks. Then she led Maudie back into the house.
“He never came back. Maudie never went back again. All October in the afternoons we’d sit on the porch again. Maudie never said a word about him or anything. I’d tell her stories but I don’t think she listened. She sat beside me and rocked and looked at the bay. I suppose she thought about it a lot but I don’t know. Maybe it was the thinking that made her so sick. I don’t know. She became silent and peaceful; maybe she dreamed. Most likely she didn’t even feel the strength flowing out of her like a dying flower. A dying flower. She was tired and her leg hurt her and she slept. I’d sleep too. We’d sit together and watch the ships for a while and see the gulls soar overhead and softly drowsing, close our eyes and let the picture books fall and hear the bumblebees. …”
It was as if Helen had suddenly awakened from a long, exhausting slumber. She crushed out her cigarette and stood up unsteadily. “So she’s going to die,” she said. “Now you know. About love. Why don’t you go home? It’s too late now to see her. Why don’t you go home? You’ve had your fun. I’ve waited all day for you and now I’m through waiting and now I’m going to Maudie. Do you want some more whisky, my dears? You can get some at all the parties. Do you want your loving? Just try to get that too! Just try! I’ll not wait any longer for anything at all!”
She raised her hands to her face and bent over sobbing tearlessly, without a sound. Tearlessly, that is, because from where they sat they could see, between her fingers, the harsh light shining on her cheeks, revealing no tears at all but only the tight-clenched eyes and closed, drawn-down mouth which held a prolonged and agonized inspiration of breath, like a baby’s. They watched her shoulders shake and they both got up, hurt and a little awed by her madness. They were moved by guilt and by sorrow, but mainly by a sort of heedless, wanton love. For Helen and for Maudie, but for other things, too—for the memory of whatever had passed among them that had been proper and good, in spite of all the rest; for the memory of all that was now irremediable and beyond recovery. Loftis said, “Helen,” and Peyton said, “Oh, Mother.”
It was as if her vision still lingered and they were there, a part of it: of endless afternoons and soaring clouds, of mimosas that swayed and trembled, of a frieze of seagulls strung out immobile against the sky. There were bumblebees, too, and the magic, mind-haunted shapes of Indians. One juggled gay blue balls underneath the trees; the others, lunatic forms with knives, prowled around them in the canebrake. All of them, the shattered family, were home again, made briefly whole: they saw the swell and dip of galleon sails, at the prow a figure, breasting the mild summer storms of another century, who thought of conquest, thought of gold.
“Mother——” Peyton said again.
Helen looked up. “You,” she said, “don’t whimper at me. You’re half the cause. Remember when you let her fall? I’ll refresh——”
“But——”
“Remember?”
“Mother——”
“You don’t care. About anything. And is that why you kept your father away from here all day? Guilty? You with your whoring around and your drinking.”
“Helen!” Loftis shouted.
She turned and left the room.
“Dickie boy, let me have that bottle again,” she said.
“Here, baby.” Her head was on his shoulder, and with an arm around her he was driving with one hand. It was fairly awkward but the convertible was big and heavy, an Oldsmobile, and it clung safely to the curves which wound through the frosty night. Above, the sky was clearing. It was deserted, sleeping country, full of pines and swamps, puffs of fog which arose from the bottoms to envelop the road in dangerous gray swirls. The car, however, was an excellent one, built like a good ship to ride out any storm; indeed, the car did suggest some kind of boat: it was as spacious and padded and comfortable as any Doge’s gondola and it took the bumps with the aggressive dignity of a ferry. They rode through a sea of mist and chill darkness; farms and fences, dark filling stations, a Negro church in a spooky grove—all these, lit up briefly by the headlights, were on a remote fantastic shore. Night was all around them, but they hardly noticed, encapsuled by steel and glass, warmed by a heater. The dashboard’s green glow illumined them and they drank, safe for a while, listening mindlessly to music from a starlit roof over Broadway. Charlottesville was miles behind.
“And the thing that gets me,” Peyton said
bitterly, “is how still—after all that—she couldn’t say a decent word at all.”
“What a female. I wish I could meet her.”
“No, you wouldn’t want to.”
“I’d like——”
“And the things she said then,” Peyton interrupted. “It was awful. I went up to her but she turned away. Then she looked at me and said, ‘It’s your fault. Your fault. You let her fall, you let her fall.’ My God, I didn’t even know what she was talking about until she ‘refreshed’ my memory, as she put it. That time I was telling you about, heavens, a couple of years ago when one time I let Maudie slip——”
“And Maudie——”
“Yes! She wouldn’t even let me see her. I left. I couldn’t stand any more of it. I just left, not even knowing how Maudie really was, whether she was—dying or what, or how much of it had all been made up. For effect, you know.”
“Jesus.”
“She said, ‘You with your drinking and your whoring around, you don’t care.’ That’s the last thing she said.”
“Jesus, honey, she sounds——”
“Yes. Crazy.” She tilted the bottle and drank, and part of the whisky drained down her camel’s hair coat.
“Careful,” he said.
“Oh, Dick.”
He comforted her, bending down to kiss her hair. On high ground, a straight, unfoggy stretch, he opened up, going very fast, and Peyton murmured, “I like to speed.” He held her close to him. There were wide barren fields now, a patch of river to the south, the Rappahannock; this was territory that they knew, where one lane, one house or barn, gliding soundlessly past the car’s vaultlike silence, only announced another house or lane or barn a few yards farther on, each more familiar as they drew closer to home. This was the Northern Neck, a land of prim pastoral fences, virgin timber, grazing sheep and Anglo-Saxons: these, the last, spoke in slumbrous Elizabethan accents, rose at dawn, went to bed at dusk, and maintained, with Calvinist passion, their traditional intolerance of evil. Most were Presbyterians and Baptists, many were Episcopalians, and all prayed and hunted quail with equal fervor and died healthily of heart failure at an advanced age; destiny had given them a peaceful and unvanquished land to live in, free of railroads and big-city ways and the meretricious lures of the flesh, and when they died they died, for the most part, in contentment, shriven of their moderate, parochial sins. They were bounded by two rivers and the sky, and were as chary of the hinterland as of the deepest heart of Africa. A sturdy and honest curiosity filled their minds, provided the objects of such were not exotic or from the North, and the smell of sea filled their days; exacting in all matters, moral but never harsh, they lived in harmony with nature and called themselves the last Americans.