“I’ll help when I feel like it,” Beulah replied. “Go shave and stop pestering me. I’m getting well the best way I can. Bringing me off down here to the sticks didn’t help, I can tell you that.”
“I don’t want to hear no complaints about Oklahoma,” Charley said, pointing a finger at her. “You ain’t givin’ Oklahoma a chance.”
Beulah had grown up in South St. Louis, right smack dab in the center of the city. Any time she’d spent in the country had been on drives between the big cities, like St. Louis and Chicago, or St. Louis and Kansas City. Life in the Oklahoma dust bowl was a far cry from the bright lights and dance halls of K.C. and downtown St. Louis. The dirt and boredom was something she didn’t think she could ever get used to, even if she never recovered from her gunshot wound.
Beulah looked annoyed. “Charley, will you just go away?” she said. “Go dig a hole or something. I’m here, ain’t I? I’m giving Oklahoma a chance. What do you want me to do, dance with the milk cow?”
“By God, if that’s how you feel, I guess I’ll leave,” Charley said.
Later, Beulah got her bathrobe on and went down to the kitchen and read stories to Annie Lee, Bessie and Bradley’s youngest girl. Annie Lee was four.
“Annie Lee, you got the prettiest hair,” she said, stroking the child’s blond curls.
Bessie came in with an armful of stove wood just in time to hear Beulah compliment Annie Lee on her hair. Bessie smiled—she couldn’t look at her daughter without smiling. The boys were a different matter; at least they were when they were being devils.
“There’s still a biscuit or two in the oven,” she told Beulah. “You could have some of that plum jelly with them.”
“I’ll eat, directly,” Beulah said. “I guess Charley went off mad.”
“Well, he went off,” Bessie agreed. “He didn’t speak to me, so I don’t know how mad he was.”
Beulah looked around the poor little kitchen, with the wood stove that was barely holding together. The kitchen was clean and smelled good, because Bessie was a good cook, but it didn’t take much of an eye to figure out that the Floyds were poor. They relied mostly on the vegetables Bessie had put up during the summer, with a little fatback for seasoning.
“Charley, why don’t you give them some money?” Beulah asked, the second day she was there, when she was settled enough to begin noting the poverty.
“They’re your kin,” she added. “You rob banks—give ’em some money.”
“They got their pride, Beulah,” Charley told her. “They like to do for themselves. They won’t even take but fifteen dollars a month for boarding you and Rose—and I had to beg ’em to take that.”
To Beulah, it seemed a bleak life: Brad a slave to the land all day, Bessie up before dawn and still cooking or scrubbing or sewing after sundown, money so scarce that the kids were only allowed to wear shoes from November to April. The bigger children sometimes went off to school barefoot, even with frost on the ground.
But Charley was right: Brad and Bessie had their pride—the most she had been able to do for them was let Bessie have a little of her toilet water one night, when Brad and Bessie had gone to a barn dance.
Bessie put the wood down by the wood stove, gave Annie Lee a little kiss, and Beulah a little squeeze. Beulah had been reading Annie Lee the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.
“I just love your sister Rose, she’s got such a sweet disposition,” Bessie said, sitting down across from Beulah and Annie Lee. “She’s out there right now, getting her feet muddy, trying to help Brad get that new calf to suck.”
“Rose is a worker,” Beulah said. “She’s always put me to shame. I’ll sit around painting my nails, and Rose will be down in the kitchen scrubbing an oven or something.”
Bessie laughed. “Well, somebody’s got to read stories to Annie Lee. Lord knows I seldom have the time.”
“Bessie, would you tell me if I’m a burden?” Beulah asked. “If I am, I’d rather hitch a ride to the bus station and just go.”
“Honey, what gives you the notion that you’re a burden?” Bessie said. “Me and Brad love havin’ you and Rose. It’s good for the kids to have new people in the house once in a while, and it’s a help to me and Brad, too.
“If we stay to ourselves too much, all we do is sit around and fight,” she added, getting up and walking over to the sink.
“Charley wants me to be cheerful like I used to be,” Beulah said. “He thinks I can just perk up because he says ‘Perk up.’”
“It don’t work that way, does it?” Bessie said. “The minute I get a little hot, Bradley tells me to calm down. It makes me want to crack him with a piece of firewood.”
“I wish I could perk up,” Beulah said. “I never was the mopey type. But I never got shot in the head before, either. I think it changed me inside. Sometimes I wonder if I ever will be jolly again.”
“You’ll be jolly again,” Bessie assured her. “Maybe not right away. But in a year or two, I ’spect you’ll be fine.”
“A year or two? Gosh,” Beulah said. “Charley Floyd won’t put up with no two years of moping.”
Before she could stop herself, Beulah burst into tears.
“Don’t drip on the book,” Annie Lee said, yanking it out of Beulah’s hands.
Bessie took Beulah’s tears in stride. She put down the dishrag, walked over by her chair a minute, and put her arms around Beulah’s shoulders.
“Charley’s just a man, honey,” Bessie said. “He ain’t a bad one, as men go. He’s always offering to help his family out. He’s got a good heart—he’s always took up for Brad, and he takes up for me like I’m his own sister.”
“Do you think he loves me, Bessie?” Beulah asked, gasping and trying to get her breath and dry her tears.
“Aw, he loves you—you oughtn’t to be doubtin’ that,” Bessie said. “You think he’d go to all the trouble to bring you down here to get well, if he didn’t care?”
“But he might stop—I ain’t pretty anymore, and I ain’t very warm to him, either—something’s gone wrong with me, I don’t know what.” Beulah sobbed; then she began to cry even harder. Bessie pulled up a chair, and began to stroke Beulah’s hand.
Annie Lee, tired of so much bawling, got up and went outside. She tried to pitch the kitten into a mud puddle, but the kitten meowed and ran off to the barn, to hide in the hay.
Bessie didn’t say anything. She just let Beulah cry.
“You’re no burden, Beulah,” Bessie said, after a while. “You and Rose wouldn’t be burdens if you lived with us for the rest of your lives. It’d just mean we had a bigger family, which I’d like.”
“You would?” Beulah asked.
“I was one of fourteen kids,” Bessie informed her. “We had cousins livin’ with us, and everyone else you could think of—hired help, and neighbors’ kids, and widows, and I don’t know who all. I miss it. I get to feelin’ lonesome around here, even though there’s the bunch of us, countin’ you and Rose.”
“’Course, I got lonesome at home, too,” Bessie added. “I may just be the lonesome type.”
“That’s what I think about Charley,” Beulah said.
He’s got that lonesome look in his eyes, and it’s worse since he shot that deputy. I don’t know what to do. I love Charley to pieces, but I can’t love him enough to take that lonesome look out of his eyes.”
“Ruby couldn’t, either—if you don’t mind my mentioning her,” Bessie chanced.
“No, mention her,” Beulah said. “He’ll hardly say her name around me. It’s because he’s still in love with her, I guess.”
Bessie didn’t answer.
Beulah didn’t know if she should press Bessie. She had always been curious about Ruby, and still was, but she felt it might not be good manners to be asking questions of Bessie, her former sister-in-law. Beulah was a guest, and she wanted to use good manners, if she could manage it.
“I keep thinking I ought to leave him,” Beulah said. “If I left him,
maybe he’d go get Ruby back, and she’d do a better job at getting him to feel less lonesome.”
“Ruby’s married to a decent man, and I hope she’d have more sense than to leave him and go running around with Charley,” Bessie confessed. “That’s hard for me to say, because I love Charley. But he’s a wanted killer, and even if he wasn’t, I doubt Charley Floyd could stay home and be happy with any woman for very long.”
“He thinks he could—all he talks about is having a home somewhere,” Beulah said. “Shoot, I’d try it with him if that’s what he really wants—at least I’d try if I ever get over the mopes.”
Bessie shrugged. “Men mostly want what they don’t have, Charley’s no exception. When he had a home, and a wife and a child, he couldn’t wait to run off to the big city and get in trouble. I guess part of him wants to settle down, but then part of him can’t tolerate settlin’ down, either.”
“I wonder how we’d do if we got married?” Beulah wondered. It was a hope she had been nursing for a while.
“If you could manage to keep him home, I guess it could be fun,” Bessie said. “I got my doubts that anybody could keep old meanderin’ Charley home for much of a stretch.”
“I expect you’re right,” Beulah admitted. “But if I can ever get my spirits up, I might give it a try.
“Where’s that plum jelly?” she asked, getting up and grabbing a cold biscuit out of Bessie’s oven.
27
“Lenny, don’t box with him when I’m trying to get him ready for school,” Ruby scolded.
“Tell him to quit. I’ll be glad to quit—I’m the one gettin’ whipped,” Lenny said, as Dempsey pummeled him with lefts and rights. One right went slightly astray, and knocked a box of cereal off the breakfast table. Dempsey was doing his fancy footwork and stepped on the box of cereal as he was dancing around, throwing punches at Lenny.
“That’s enough, Dempsey! Stop it!” Ruby said. “Just stop it.”
Both her husband and her son were cutups, which she didn’t usually mind. The problem was that they were apt to be at their friskiest right before breakfast, a time when she would have liked to sit quietly and saucer a cup of coffee. Her brain got off to a slow start some mornings, and having Lenny and Dempsey punching at one another like prize-fighters, knocking cereal off the table, didn’t help it pick up speed.
“Well, off to work,” Lenny said, leaning over to give Ruby a peck. “Try not to beat up nobody at recess, Mr. Dempsey.”
“I will too beat up somebody at recess!” Dempsey predicted—though usually, he was timid at school, and didn’t get in fights. It was only in daydreams that he beat people up.
“Lenny, could you bring home a few doughnuts from the bakery?” Ruby asked, looking up at her husband. Lenny was the sweetest guy in Coffeyville, Kansas, that was for sure. He didn’t know how to take care of himself at all. It made Ruby feel sorry for him.
“‘Course—you want the glazed?” Lenny asked.
“Just doughnuts, all kinds, any kinds,” Ruby said. “You decide.”
Lenny gave her another peck, and left.
“Charles Dempsey, do you think you could clean up that cereal you spilled?” Ruby asked.
“It’s all squished, Mama,” Dempsey said. “You can sweep it with the broom.”
“Okay, go get me the hairbrush, your hair’s one cowlick after another this morning,” Ruby said.
While Ruby was trying to smooth down Dempsey’s hair, there was a knock at the front door. Ruby was still in her bathrobe and gown; she had a suspicion that it was a vacuum cleaner salesman who had been pestering everybody in town for the past week. Ruby had already turned him down twice, and didn’t have any patience left to waste on the man.
“Dempsey, would you get the door?” she asked, giving his hair a final brush. “If it’s a salesman, tell him to go away, we don’t want any.”
She was about to put the coffeepot back on the stove to warm the coffee a little, when Dempsey came back into the kitchen with a funny look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” Ruby asked.
“It wasn’t the vacuum cleaner man,” Dempsey said.
“Who was it, honey?” Ruby asked, stooping down in front of him.
“It’s my daddy,” Dempsey said.
“Oh, did he forget something?” Ruby asked, assuming he meant Lenny. Dempsey had called Lenny Daddy for the past month or two.
“No … I don’t mean Lenny,” Dempsey said. “It’s my daddy.”
Ruby thought it was some tease Lenny and Dempsey had thought up to pester her, just as she was trying to get Dempsey off to school. It seemed to take longer every morning, but once it was accomplished she could look forward to an hour of peace and quiet before she had to start dealing with the chores of the day.
She jumped up from the table, ready to give Dempsey and Lenny a piece of her mind: then she saw Charley, standing in her front door, in a stylish blue overcoat.
The shock hit Ruby so hard that she felt weak in the legs. She didn’t know what to say or do. She had imagined such a moment—Charley coming back—but when she was imagining it, she handled it well, she kept it under control, she did the sensible thing.
But this wasn’t imagining; Charley was standing in the open door. One more step, and he would be in her home. It wasn’t old feelings coming back; it took only one look in his eyes to make her know that she still loved him: the feelings had never gone away.
“Come in, shut the door, somebody might see you—oh my God, did Lenny see you?” Ruby asked—Lenny was so jealous of Charley’s place in her past and Dempsey’s that if he had seen Charley coming up the walk, he was probably already down at the sheriff’s office, turning him in.
“He didn’t see me, Ruby—I parked in the next block,” Charley assured her. “He went on to work.”
Ruby quickly turned her attention to Dempsey. It was too unsettling to look at Charley.
“Dempsey, you’re going to be late for school if you don’t hurry,” she said.
Dempsey’s face fell.
“But I don’t have to go to school today,” Dempsey said. “Daddy said I didn’t.”
For a moment, the swirl of feelings inside Ruby focused and became anger.
“Oh, Daddy did, did he?” she said. “You two must’ve got acquainted real quick, if he’s already telling you what you can and can’t do.”
Charley knew he probably shouldn’t have told Dempsey such a thing—but it was something he couldn’t resist. He saw the red anger spots on Ruby’s cheekbones, and the heat in her eyes. He tried grinning; maybe it would help.
“Don’t you bust in here after all this time and start giving orders, Charley!” Ruby said, her eyes flashing. “I ain’t raising no outlaw. Dempsey has to go to school like other children.”
“Mama, can’t I miss one day?” Dempsey asked. “Daddy’s here.”
“No, you can’t, Charles Dempsey,” Ruby said. She grabbed his coat and stuffed him into it.
Charley looked at his son and shrugged. “Mama’s the boss,” he said. “You go on to school.”
“Will you be here when I get back?” Dempsey asked.
“I sure will,” Charley said, avoiding Ruby’s eyes when he said it.
Even so, Dempsey was reluctant to leave. He took a step or two and stopped, turning around and looking at his father, hoping his mother would relent.
“Charles Dempsey, GO TO SCHOOL!” Ruby commanded, pointing down the street.
Charles Dempsey shuffled off, looking sad. He looked over his shoulder several times, but he kept his feet moving, and proceeded in the general direction of the school. It was a windy day; leaves swirled around him as he walked.
Ruby quickly shut the door, but she and Charley stood by the living room window, watching Dempsey until he turned the corner. Ruby was afraid to speak. Feelings rose and swirled like a tornado inside her, a tornado that might pick her up and toss her into a fence or a wall.
“What was the point of that?” Charley a
sked, finally. “I ain’t seen him in more than five years. It wouldn’t hurt him to miss one day.”
“Whose fault is it that you ain’t seen him?” Ruby inquired. “Where was you, that you didn’t see him? I would’ve sent him to your folks anytime, if you’d just asked.”
They looked at one another in awkward silence.
“I guess I didn’t feel I had the right to ask you anything, honey,” Charley replied.
“Don’t call me honey!” Ruby snapped. “I got a decent life here, you can’t just open the door and walk in after all this time and start in callin’ me honey—like none of what I been through mattered at all.”
“Can I have a cup of coffee while we’re arguin’?” Charley asked. “I drove all night to get here.”
Ruby started to tell him to hike it to a cafe and buy himself a cup, but the words wouldn’t come out. She turned and went back to the kitchen, with Charley a step behind her.
“I’ve had dreams about your coffee,” Charley admitted, as he sipped a cup. “You ever have dreams with smells in ’em? I have, lots of times.”
Ruby decided the thing to do would be not to look at him. If she didn’t look at him, the tornado might set her down safe. He could drink his cup of coffee, and then he could go.
“Pardon me, but I have to get busy with the dishes,” she said—she was determined to stay calm. She took the coffeepot off the stove and carefully set it in the icebox. She carried several plates to the sink, and then carefully took her apron out of the cupboard. She put the folded apron in the oven, at which point she happened to glance at Charley, who was grinning his infuriating grin.
“Excuse me, honey,” he said, as he pushed his chair back from the table and got up. “Are we gonna have that apron with grits or potatoes?”
“You shut your smart mouth, Charley!” Ruby blurted, but before she could say anything more, Charley shut her mouth by kissing her. He just stood up and kissed her, smack on the lips. He had her bathrobe open, too. She felt his warm hands, hands she had missed for years. Then the tornado rose and lifted her so high she forgot about safety. Charley was the storm; what she felt for him was swirling, faster and faster.