Carry Me Home (12 page)

“You think you’re too good for me now, just because you got that city boy sniffing around you? That it? Shit, you aren’t nothing but a two-bit whore, and don’t think City Boy ain’t figured that one out. You listening to me, bitch?”

“Go home, Bottoms. We’re closing,” Ruby Leigh says without looking up.

Then that fat bastard, he gets up from his stool, real fast for a fat man, and he stomps right around to the back of the bar. He jerks Ruby Leigh by the arm, hard, and spins her around. “You listen to me when I’m talking to you, whore.”

I drop the chair I’m holding. I go right behind the bar where I ain’t suppose to go, and I pop Bottoms Conner so hard that his back slams against the back bar. A few of them drippy-wet glasses, they crash to the floor, slices of glass shooting like little missiles. I pin that sucker right to the bar. “Listen here, mister, I think you better start minding your Ps and Qs.”

“Get off me, you fucking idiot,” Bottoms says, and he shoves at my chest, then uses his fat hand to catch the blood that’s coming outta his nose. I let him go then, not ’cause he tells me to, but ’cause I can tell he’s done being nasty to Ruby Leigh and ’cause there ain’t no way I’m gonna stare at that blood. I give him a little shove. “You go on home now. Your wife’s gonna be wondering where you are.”

Eva Leigh runs to Ruby the minute Bottoms is gone. “Are you all right?” Eva Leigh is all skittery, but Ruby Leigh, she is just plain pissed. “Fat, ugly prick!” she says. “Who to hell does he think he is? Limp-dick bastard!” She spews them cuss words ’til every one of ’em is outta her, then she starts to crying.

I go fetch the broom to clean up the broken glass, and Eva Leigh steers Ruby to a stool. I’m real glad that Slim went home early or I’d be shit-canned for going behind the bar and punching a paying customer.

When I come back with the broom and dustpan, Ruby Leigh gets off her stool and comes to me. “Thank you, Earwig,” she says, and her eyes get all glittery with tears. “In my whole goddamn life, no guy has ever stood up for me. Not once. Thank you.” It’s enough to break a pinsetter’s heart, the way she says that. She gets on her tiptoes and she presses her lips right against my cheek.

When I get home, I go up a couple steps out front of the store and lean over the pipe rail, and, yep, Jimmy’s star is still blue. I think of Jimmy, and Floyd, and Louie and John, and wish they was here so I could tell ’em I kicked somebody’s ass tonight. I know damn well if they were here, I’d get the first beer.

Chapter 15

I
’m in the store working the morning Edna Pritchard comes in. She is showing Ma a picture of Irene Rich, from the
Irene Rich Drama
, and oh, my, don’t Irene look trim and slim after being on the Welch’s Reducing Plan all these years. “You drink one glass of Welch’s before each sensible meal,” Mrs. Pritchard says, and I’m thinking she better drink maybe five or six glasses if she wants to get rid of that fat ass.

Edna Pritchard plops a can of Welch’s on the counter, and she says she don’t care if it takes every blue stamp she’s got, she’s buying it. Ma tells her that she don’t know when we’re gonna get any more Welch’s in, on accounta fruit and fruit juice is getting mighty hard to come by now. Mrs. Pritchard says she’ll have it shipped in from Ripley if we run out, or have her sister hunt some up in Chicago if she has to.

Ma and Mrs. Pritchard are still talking about her reducing plan when Mrs. Banks comes in. Mrs. Pritchard starts to tell Mrs. Banks about her reducing plan, when Ma says, “Just a minute, Edna. What’s wrong, Selma?”

Selma Banks, she shakes her head, real pitiful-like. “I just heard that the little Leigh girl, Eva, she got her telegram this morning. Luke Leigh is dead.”

Ma’s hand goes over her mouth and she shakes her head, her eyes welling up. It don’t matter what GI dies, even if they was as mean as a rabid skunk, or even if she don’t know the dead guy from Adam. Ma still starts to crying and gets the nerves every time she hears bad news about a soldier.

“Oh, my, poor Elsie,” Edna Pritchard says about Luke’s mom. “As if she’s not had a heavy enough cross to bear, married all those years to that horrible man, then raising a pack of kids just like him.”

“Poor Eva,” Ma says. “So young to be left alone with a child.”

I don’t ask Ma if I can leave. I just do. I go to Eva Leigh’s apartment, right above Sam’s Barber Shop, and I give Eva Leigh a hug, ’cause even if that Luke was a no-account son of a bitch, Eva didn’t want him dead. She is sitting on the wored-out sofa, still holding that paper that says that Luke did a good thing dying for his country, the paper that is signed by the President hisself. “I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it,” she says.

“I’m real sorry, Eva. Luke was mean, but it’s still a shame he got killed.”

LJ, he wants to play airplane, so I play with him a bit. “LJ is just a little boy. He doesn’t know what dead means,” Eva Leigh says. “He don’t even remember his daddy.”

I ain’t there but fifteen minutes or so when Ruby Leigh comes home. She’s crying too. She hugs Eva Leigh and they sit on the couch together. “How’s Ma?” Eva Leigh asks, and Ruby tells her that Elsie is like you’d expect. I know I can’t stay, ’cause I got to clean the storage room and I got things to price, but I tell Eva Leigh that I’ll come by later. When she hugs me good-bye, she feels all small and sad in my arms. “You’re a good friend, Earl,” she says. As I’m going down them stairs, ladies is coming up. I can smell baked beans and something like stew coming from the pots they is carrying. I know that soon enough, Eva Leigh’s table is gonna be full of things to eat, ’cause that is what them women do when they get the nerves. They bake. And they give them baked things to people with sorrows.

Luke Leigh ain’t even had his memorial service yet when Elliot Birmingham comes around again. He drinks his beers and talks to the guys at the bar like always, but he don’t hardly give Ruby Leigh the time of day. She waits ’til the place is almost empty, then she goes up and leans over the bar to talk to him.

Even though I’m watching from my triangle window and can’t hear a thing they is saying, I know that Mr. Birmingham is saying something that makes Ruby Leigh sad. I know it ’cause Ruby Leigh, she looks like she’s shrinking.

When Mr. Birmingham gets up to leave, Ruby Leigh yells, “Elliot!” so loud I can hear it above the jukebox. She comes right out from the bar and she runs to catch up to him. The way Ruby Leigh starts pawing at his jacket reminds me of Lucky when he’s begging for something from my plate.

Elliot Birmingham, he grins and shakes his head like he can’t believe she’s grabbing his jacket like that. He jiggles his arm until her hand drops away, then he leaves.

Elliot Birmingham, he’s got a wife and three boys it turns out, and that’s all there is to it. “He thanked me for the good time,” Ruby Leigh says. “The bastard thanked me for the good time.” Ruby, she’s as broke up as Eva Leigh now.

Ma and me go to Luke’s memorial service together. Dad don’t go, ’cause he’s in Janesville on accounta it’s a weekday, but Ma told him about Luke when he called. They didn’t talk long, ’cause the war rules say you can’t hog up the long-distance lines longer than five minutes, but they talked long enough for Dad to tell Ma to tell Eva Leigh that he’s really sorry about what happened to Luke.

Ma, she hugs Eva Leigh real nice, and she cries when she says how sorry she is. I can see Ma out the side of my eye as Preacher Michaels talks on and on about how wonderful it is that Luke gave his life for his country. Ma is crying into her hankie, and I start to wonder if she’s crying for Luke or if she’s crying for a different dead soldier, ’cause Ma never cared a lick for Luke Leigh.

Up front, Eva Leigh and Ruby Leigh sit by Luke’s ma, who is small and bent and looks like she got beat up lots of times. LJ is on Ruby Leigh’s lap ’cause his mama’s crying too hard to hold him. Used to be Eva Leigh and Ma and Ruby Leigh, they seemed so different that I wouldn’t have even had them in my head at the same time. But now I think maybe all three of ’em are pretty much the same. They is all ladies who loved the wrong man and got their hearts crushed when their man got gone.

First night Eva Leigh comes back to work, I walk her and Ruby Leigh home. We sit in the living room and Ruby Leigh makes coffee. We get to talking about all the sorrows we got. Ruby Leigh talks about Elliot Birmingham and how he’s the first guy she ever loved and how he’s gonna be her last. Eva Leigh talks about Luke. She says he sure was ornery, yet he gave her a wonderful little boy, and things were good for a time. Ruby says Luke was a son of a bitch, but he was still her brother, and she cries some after she says it. I talk about my brother too, and about how he’s probably a “P.O.W.” now, which is what Dad says is short for “prisoner of war.” I tell ’em I get scared that one day I’m gonna go out front of the store and look and his star is gonna be gold. Them girls, they listen real good, and they pat my hand and rub my shoulder when I talk my turn. Before you know it, we is all crying.

We get quiet for a time, except for our sniffling, then Ruby Leigh, she says the damnedest thing. She says, “What a sorry-assed bunch we are. A widow, a whore, and a simpleton, bawling and carrying on like there ain’t no tomorrow. I’ve never seen anything more pathetic in my whole goddamn life. A widow, a whore, and a simpleton. Now, don’t that beat all.” And even though we is all filled up with sorrows, we start to laughing then. We laugh until we can’t hold ourselves up no more and topple over like dominoes.

Chapter 16

M
a scoops up change out of one of the cubbyholes in the till and starts counting while I turn off the outside store lights like she told me to. That change is clinky-plinking as I take the sign from the window and spin it around so customers can see that we ain’t open no more. I just get the sign propped back in the window when I see Mrs. Pritchard’s Ford pull up. “Mrs. Pritchard is here, Ma!”

Ma plunks the rest of the change she’s holding back into the till and grumbles. Pritchard’s car is rocking like a boat as she hoists herself outta it. “Here she comes!” I say.

“Sorry, Eileen. I know it’s past hours,” she tells Ma as she thumps her purse on the counter. “But I felt I just had to come and tell you this because I’d rather you hear it from a friend. I didn’t want to come in while the store was busy, when there are extra pairs of ears around.” She waves her fat hand toward the stool that sits behind the counter. “My legs have been giving me trouble,” Mrs. Pritchard says, and she shoots a look my way as Ma brings her the stool. She sits down, her breath making a big whoosh.

“What’s wrong, Edna?” Ma asks. I pick up the broom and go back behind the meat counter and start sweeping the floor like I’m suppose to after the store closes.

“Eileen,” Mrs. Pritchard says, “you know I don’t like gossip, but there’s a difference between passing along stories just for the sake of gossiping, and telling the plain truth for the sake of being a good friend.” Edna Pritchard pauses while she catches her breath. “Well, Eileen, you know my sister, the one who moved down to Chicago so her husband could take a better job?”

Ma nods. “Yes, of course. Ruth.”

“Well,” Mrs. Pritchard says, “I just got off the phone with her. She was telling me how last Sunday, her and Owen took in a movie, then stopped for coffee and dessert afterward. Well, Eileen, she ran into Molly in the restaurant.

“She doesn’t really know Molly, of course. When Ruth left here, Molly was still in that awkward stage, but Ruth said she’d know Judith’s grown daughter anywhere. Molly is the spitting image of Judith, and Ruth and Judith were close friends, as you know. Anyway, Ruth doesn’t have a shy bone in her body, so she went right up to Molly and asked her if she was from Willowridge.”

“Yes, Molly does look just like her mother,” Ma says. I can’t figure out for nothing why Pritchard’s gotta come by after hours to tell Ma that Molly looks like her ma.

“Eileen, do you think I could have a nice cold glass of water? I’m a bit weak, or winded, or something. I don’t know what’s wrong with me these days. Maybe it’s this reducing plan.” Ma tells me to bring Mrs. Pritchard a glass of water.

When I’m coming back with the water, I hear Mrs. Pritchard say, “No, Eileen, there was no mistaking the situation.” Mrs. Pritchard takes the glass of water from me and she don’t say thank you. She peers down, then holds the glass up to the light and looks through it like she’s expecting a booger or a tadpole to be swimming in it.

“Molly was cozied right up to this young man—that is, until Ruth went up to her and asked her if she was from Willowridge. Ruth said this young gentleman was very well dressed, and the way he carried himself it was plain to see that he comes from money.

“Well, Eileen, I just thought you should know. I hate to be the one to tell you, but it’s better if it comes from a close friend.” Mrs. Pritchard don’t look sorry she has to be the one to tell Ma at all.

Ma waits ’til Mrs. Pritchard leaves, then she explodes like a stick of dynamite. “I knew that girl was trouble from the start! I told Hank, Molly would end up thinking she was too good for Jimmy, but he told me to keep my nose out of it. I knew it, though, I knew it! Little two-timing hussy! ‘I hate to be the one to tell you . . .’ ” Ma says, just like Pritchard. “Oh, you bet she hated to tell me. She was gloating the whole while!” Then Ma’s anger gets all used up. She rubs her forehead first, then rests her hand on the side of her face. “Poor Jimmy. He’s going to be so hurt.”

I don’t say nothing. I just finish sweeping and think about Molly, all tiny and pink like candy. I think of Jimmy, and the way he was kissing on her hand before he left. They made a promise. A promise she could show her girlfriends. They was gonna get married and I was gonna move with ’em into that Williams place, which will be a right nice place when it’s fixed up. Now when Jimmy comes home, he ain’t gonna have no girlfriend, and I ain’t moving nowhere with him and Molly. It pisses me off enough that I decide that after Jimmy comes home, I’m gonna ask Ruby Leigh if she’ll give Jimmy a little milk for free since he don’t have a girl no more. I bet Ruby Leigh would do that, on accounta she’s gone back to her old ways now that Mr. Birmingham is gone.

Me and Ruby Leigh walk home alone after work ’cause Eva Leigh, she caught the pukes from LJ, so she didn’t work tonight. While we’s walking, Ruby Leigh, she reaches up and taps my head with her fist, but she don’t do it hard. “Hello? Anybody in there?” she says.

“I am,” I say.

Ruby Leigh, she puts her hand on my arm. “What’s wrong, Earl?”

Ma says there’s things you should tell other people, and there’s things you shouldn’t. I have a feeling the things stuffing up my head are things I shouldn’t tell her, but the way I see it, who would know more about this loving stuff than Ruby Leigh, who’s always loving on somebody? “Ruby Leigh? If I was to ask you some things about loving, would that be something I should ask?”

Ruby Leigh smiles. “Sure, Earl.”

“Well,” I say, “how come some people stop loving each other, and some people don’t?”

Ruby Leigh, she is swinging her purse a little as we walk. She looks up at me, like she’s studying on something, then she says, “Earl, you talking about somebody in particular?”

“Well, I guess I am. I’m talking about Jimmy and Molly, and I guess I’m talking about my ma and dad too.” My voice kinda cracks when I say that.

Ruby Leigh, she puts her hand on my sleeve. “Oh, Earl, what’s going on, honey?”

“Well, Molly, she’s two-timing Jimmy. And my ma and dad, well, there’s trouble there too.”

Ruby Leigh stops walking, and she leads me to the bench in front of the barber shop. It’s so late, there ain’t even a drunk on the street. “Oh, Earwig, I’m so sorry. Come on, honey, sit down and we’ll talk.”

My throat gets all tight, like I’m gonna strangle on my own spit, when I tell her how Molly is gonna up and marry somebody, but it ain’t gonna be Jimmy. “Ah, poor Jimmy.” Ruby Leigh sighs. “It’s happening a lot, though, Earl. The soldiers have been gone a long time, and long separations have a way of cooling a girl’s heart down.”

“Not my ma’s heart,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

So I tell Ruby Leigh about how I was playing pirate and how I found that old treasure chest with pictures of Ma kissing that guy that looks like Jimmy. “Turns out that guy in them pictures is my uncle Willie—well, he ain’t really my uncle no more, ’cause he’s dead. He got killed in that other war.

“And that ain’t all, Ruby Leigh. I put two and two together, and now I’m thinking that me and Jimmy ain’t whole brothers at all, just half brothers.”

She asks me lots of questions. She asks me how old Jimmy is now, and I tell her I ain’t exactly sure but that he was twenty-one years old when he joined up with the Guard. Ruby Leigh says that was in 1940, so she figures it out and says he’s twenty-four now. Then she asks how long Ma and Dad been married, and I gotta think hard, ’cause I ain’t sure on that one, on account of I heard Dad say to Ma that they been married twenty-one years, but I knowed I heard her tell Mrs. Pritchard not that long ago that they been married for twenty-five years. When I tell Ruby Leigh this, she looks down at her hands. “Earl, it sounds to me like your ma and your uncle were lovers first. It sounds like she got in the family way and probably didn’t realize it until after your uncle left for the war. I suppose your daddy married her after your uncle died so Jimmy would have a daddy, and probably because he loved her.”

“Ruby Leigh, this means my ma was giving her milk away for free, don’t it? I never did think of my ma as one of them bad kind of girls, but now I’m thinking it.” The minute I say it, I’m sorry, ’cause I remember that Ruby Leigh is the town whore. “I’m sorry, Ruby Leigh. I, I—”

“It’s okay, Earl.”

We sit for a minute without talking. Ruby Leigh, she takes my hand and holds it real soft.

“My uncle Willie’s been dead for a long time, but seems to me Ma is feeling as sad as if it just happened yesterday.”

Ruby Leigh bites on her lip that looks near black in the dark. She says, “I think your ma had all those memories come back to her when Jimmy went off to war, like his blood daddy. She probably didn’t feel those sorrows over him being killed back then, with all the worrying she had to do about being in the family way and not having a husband. Bad girls like me, we don’t worry about our reputations because most of us never had one to begin with. But girls like your ma, they worry about their reputations a lot.

“Feeling our sorrows is just something a person’s got to do, though, Earwig. We have to feel our sorrows, or else they stay locked up inside forever, making our hearts close up like fists and making us do crazy things.”

“You think my ma loves my dad?” I ask Ruby Leigh.

“I can’t really say, because I don’t know your mom and dad well. What do you think?”

“I don’t know, but I hope so. I don’t think Molly loves Jimmy no more, though.” I give a sigh so big that my belly sucks in, skinny as Floyd’s. “It just don’t make no sense. Ma loving a dead guy after all these years, even though she ain’t suppose to, and Molly not loving Jimmy after only a couple, even though she’s suppose to.”

“Well, Earwig, there’s not much about love that does makes sense.”

I get home late from the Ten Pin, and I’m hanging my uniform shirt up real nice in my closet when I hear Ma and Dad’s bedroom door open. Then I hear Ma say, “What are you doing up, Hank? Can’t you sleep?”

Dad don’t say nothing, so I peek down the vent. He is taking a loaf of bread outta the breadbox and getting out a knife. “You want a sandwich, Hank? I’ll get that. Here, let me.” Ma takes the knife from Dad and tells him to sit down. “I’ll reheat the coffee. There’s a little left.”

“I’ll just have bread and butter.”

“You want some apple butter on it? I found a jar stuck back in the pantry.”

“No, butter’s fine.”

“You sure you don’t want me to make you up a sandwich with the leftover chicken?” Ma is fluttering around the kitchen like a moth.

“Eileen,” Dad says, “you don’t have to do this.”

Ma stops in her tracks. “Do what?”

“Try so hard.”

For a little bit, they just look at each other and there ain’t a peep of sound but for the hum of the Frigidaire. “Yes, I do, Hank. Yes, I do.” Ma starts bawling then and Dad sits for a minute, then he gets up from the chair and goes to her. He wraps his arms around her.

“I’m so sorry.” It’s hard to hear what else Ma is saying, ’cause she’s got her face mashed up against Dad’s shoulder.

Dad pulls Ma back and he holds on to the sides of her face. “Eileen, I know you loved him. That’s never been a secret between us. I never expected it to be. I just need to know that you learned to love me somewhere along the line too.”

Ma starts shaking her head. “Oh, Hank, I spent so many of our early years together mourning Willie, building him up in my head until no one could compare. I was just as blind with my young, starry eyes as Jimmy is with Molly. All these years. All these years no one could hold a candle to the boy in my memory. But, Hank, I’m not a girl anymore, and with having you gone so much now . . . Oh, I’ve been such a fool.”

Dad tells Ma she ain’t no fool, and Ma tells Dad how much she loves him, then they start to kissing.

I get up from the floor. I’m real glad they’re kissing, but I don’t wanna watch, in case he starts grabbing at her titties or something.

The next morning, Ma turns on the radio as she scrambles eggs, and Dad, he whistles in the bathroom as he shaves. Everything feels right again. At least as right as it can feel with Jimmy still gone.