Cavedweller (19 page)

N
adine Reitower was beside herself. “That hussy, she’s purely shameless,” she told her new hairdresser at Beckman’s. “Bad enough that place down the road’s been an eyesore all these years, with that worthless drunk staggering in and out, but now she moves in with those pitiful girls of hers, and God only knows what’s going on in there. And Lord, the youngest one, that devil child, going around in those dark glasses and always pestering my Nolan.”

Nolan Reitower was Cissy’s first real friend. “I think he’s about the only young ’un around here,” M.T. had said when Delia and Cissy moved in with Clint. “And his mama keeps him pretty close to home. She’s a bit difficult, that Nadine Reitower.”

Cissy never forgot the first few times she saw Nolan, planted on his mama’s porch every afternoon with a different paperback book in his hand. It was the books that drew her. Nadine had sniffed at Delia’s girl when she walked up to that porch and asked Nolan what he was reading, but Nolan just pushed his glasses up his sweaty nose and held out the book, a pristine copy of
Starship
Troopers by Robert Heinlein.

“You read
Stranger?”
Cissy asked.

“I’ve read ’em all. Only one I don’t reread is
Podkayne.
That one got on my nerves.”

“Yeah, it’s like he wrote it on drugs or something. Most unbelievable girl in science fiction. I prefer Telzey myself. You know her?”

Nolan nodded. “Schwartz,” he said, identifying the author.

There was a cough of disapproval from Nadine’s chair as she pulled loose threads from a hem she was taking down.

“You like science fiction then?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah.”

Nolan put
Starship Troopers
down with a scrap of ribbon marking his place. “Come on,” he said, and led her around to the back of the house and down into the basement. Along one wall of the workshop his daddy rarely used there were four tall bookshelves built just to hold paperbacks. Each was crammed tightly, books sorted alphabetically by author and marked with little cardboard dividers.

“My collection.” Nolan’s voice was deep with pride.

“Lord.” Cissy ran her fingers along the spines of some of the titles in the middle of one shelf: Harry Harrison, Robert Heinlein, Frank Herbert, Tanya Huff, Fritz Leiber, Ursula Le Guin, and multiple copies of the Julian May books arranged in sets. The bottom two shelves of each bookcase held
magazines—Analog, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction
—each boxed by year in labeled cardboard cases, though many were without covers and the oldest were stained and mildewed.

“This is serious.” Cissy’s voice was hushed, and she looked up to see Nolan smiling at her.

“If you want, you could borrow some.” He said it casually, but Cissy knew it was no casual offer. A boy who sorted and shelved his books so meticulously but then had to put them down in the basement, that boy was not going to be casual about sharing them. Looking at Nolan’s collection, Cissy understood more about him than his mama had figured out in years.

“I would appreciate you trusting me with your books,” she said. “And I’d be careful with them, very careful.”

Cissy and Nolan became friends in that moment. It did not even bother her when she realized that he was in love with Dede. A boy who reread Tolkien and Heinlein every summer had to be a romantic, and Nolan’s first encounter with Dede was proof if more were needed.

“Lord, look at you!” Nolan was on his way up the front steps with a couple of new books for Cissy and walked right into Dede racing out the door. “You’re beautiful,” he blurted.

Dede laughed. “Well, look at you,” she said back. “Bet you’re your mama’s little precious.” She flashed a look of teenage contempt and walked away.

“What she say?” Cissy asked, coming to the door.

But Nolan just shook his head. He did not, fortunately, remember Dede’s exact words, only the look and feel of her as she trained those crisp blue eyes on him. Magnificent, he thought, and blushed every time he saw Dede on the street. It did not matter that she was two years older and could not see him at all. Nolan was in love, heart-struck and imprinted. Dede could have cursed him up one side and down the other, and he would have stood there waiting for her to curse him some more.

Nolan was not the only one smitten with Dede. Young as she was, Dede caught the eye like something diamond-edged and precious. Boys would look over at her against their best intentions, be drawn in and made over just by standing next to her. It was something about the way she smelled. Good boys, churchgoing and respectful, would get a whiff of Dede and turn in a day to sucking Marlboros and spitting, talking bad and hoping for more than they could explain.

Ruby and Pearl had been right about Dede sneaking off with boys, if not about “it.” For most of the year at Grandma Windsor’s, she had been slipping away with the Petrie boys while Amanda was off at prayer meetings. She told Delia that they were teaching her how to drive. When they turned up at Clint’s one day, Delia took one look at the rawboned sixteen-year-old twins, with their flushed features and shifty eyes, and knew they had been teaching Dede more than downshifting in that Chevy truck of their daddy’s.

“You’re too young.” Delia kept her gaze on the nervous boys.

“Both my sisters been driving since they was fourteen.” Leroy Petrie was trying to look Delia in the face. He knew that was what. he needed to do to convince her he was harmless, but every time his eyes lifted to hers, a shock seemed to pass from his upper thighs to his navel. He looked over at his brother, but there was no help there. Clearly Craig was just as terrified as he was, both of them trying to hide the effect Dede had on them, and their fear that Delia would no longer let them see her.

“I’m a good teacher,” Leroy said. “Really, ma’am. I’m careful.”

“I have no doubt.” Delia looked back at Dede, who was sitting on the couch with a magazine, a half smile showing on her face. She made no effort to join in the conversation.

Dede had lost interest in Leroy and his brother, though for months she had fought Grandma Windsor for every moment she could steal to wedge herself between them in the cab of that truck. She had learned to drive, but it was less to do with the boys than with her own hunger. When she thought about those months of practicing, it was the lessons of her body that resonated—her knees hot and bruised between the gearshift and Craig’s thigh, her hip pressed to Leroy’s, their hands drifting across her skin like little animals, hungry and heedless. The boys had not actually let her drive more than a few blocks at any one time. The height of her accomplishment with them had been to steer the truck and work the gas pedal while sitting in the middle of the seat, the brothers on either side of her, cupping her breasts through the sheer material of her blouse. Both of them were intoxicated with the smell of Dede’s skin and hair, so much so that they panicked as she steered them down the road—afraid not that she would crash but that they would lose control of themselves.

“Dede’s good,” Craig managed to say to Delia. “She’s got natural talent for driving. Real talent.”

Dede grinned at him. It was Craig who had told her that their price for a real chance at driving the truck would be the removal of those layers of cotton and nylon that had so far obstructed their approach to her body. It was a problem. While Dede really wanted to learn to drive, she was not fool enough to give the Petrie boys anything more than they had so far managed—brief moments of access, severely limited and carefully accounted for, just like her access to the truck, but she had been yielding steadily as she coaxed more and more driving time, and sooner or later, the situation was going to get out of hand.

“I appreciate what you’ve done, boys. I truly appreciate it. But I can teach Dede what she needs to know just fine.” Delia watched their faces turn to Dede, the longing so plain on them. She saw, too, how Dede smiled at them, the easy control her daughter had, and disdained.

“You want me to teach you, Dede?” she asked.

Dede gave a shrewd grin, turning from the boys to her mama. “In that beat-up old Datsun of yours?”

Delia tried not to let her disappointment show.

“I’d love to learn stick,” Dede said, her face alight. “That would be great.”

Delia turned to the stricken boys. “Leroy,” she said. “Craig. Thank you for coming round.” She eased them out the door gracefully, ignoring the mournful glances they kept shooting at Dede.

Delia always said the smartest move she ever made was teaching Dede to drive. It was the decision that broke the ice between them. She also said it was the scariest six months of her life. Craig was right, Dede was a talented driver. Her instincts were astonishing, her eye and reflexes extraordinary, but the girl had no governor, no stopping point, no fear. Delia’s greatest challenge was to convince Dede that driving was not about racing or pushing the limits of the car.

“A car is a way to get somewhere, nothing else. It’s no reflection of your soul, nothing you can use to prove who you are. You play games in a car, you’re playing with other people’s lives,” Delia said, watching her daughter’s distracted, careless face.

“You understand me, Dede? You understand?”

“Yeah, I know. But I was wondering, how fast can this thing go?”

 

 

A
manda remained unrelentingly hostile. She didn’t even try to get Delia and Cissy to go to church with her, though she nagged her sister mercilessly. Dede was fascinated with the idea that a person could just decide on Sunday morning whether she would go to church or not.

“I can stay home if I want, right?” Dede asked Delia every Sunday.

“Yes, if you want,” Delia said, and Dede would grin and go back to the bedroom. Then she might come out all dressed and ready, but there was no predicting.

“Cissy said you were Buddhist. Don’t Buddhists believe in hell?” she asked Delia once.

“I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist,” Delia told her. “And Buddhists have a whole different idea from the heaven and hell the preachers talk about. They think it’s life that is hard. The goal is not to get to heaven but to get off the wheel of life.”

“Wow!” Dede beamed. “You think I would make a good Buddhist?”

“I think you might want to take a little more time before you go jumping religions just to avoid getting out of bed on Sunday morning.”

When Dede stayed home, Amanda blamed it on Delia. “You don’t care if we go to hell, but I do,” she said. “You don’t even believe in your immortal soul, but God does.” She went on and on, quoting Reverend Hillman and Grandma Windsor and various pamphlets she had read, while Delia nodded and shrugged and refused to argue, finally reminding Amanda that if she didn’t leave soon she would be late. Amanda would plead one last time with Dede and then go out the door with a martyred expression.

If Dede did go to church, Amanda did not seem any the happier. “Well,” she would say when Dede came out dressed for services, “won’t God be surprised!”

 

 

I
t wasn’t easy to get to Holiness Redeemer from the house on Terrill Road, but Amanda refused Delia’s offer of a ride and doggedly took the bus. The first Sunday after the move, Reverend Hillman winced when Amanda rushed up to hug Grandma Windsor before the service and the old woman turned away. Sunday after Sunday, Louise Windsor rebuffed her granddaughter as if it were her fault that she was living with the harlot who had taken advantage of Louise’s weak, worthless, dying son and sweet-talked him into forcing her to give up the girls. When Reverend Hillman offered to pray with her, Grandma Windsor turned glassy eyes on him and told him he had done enough already.

Grandma Windsor’s coldness broke Amanda’s heart, and she finally started going to Cayro Baptist Tabernacle. The congregation was big enough that she could avoid M.T., and she liked Reverend Myles. She had come to take a dim view of Reverend Hillman, the agent of her exile to Delia, and Reverend Myles reminded her of the minister at Holiness before Hillman came back. They had a similar style of preaching, heartfelt and loud. Grandma Windsor always said that the church was truly a church of the Word under Reverend Call. “That was a preacher,” she’d declare, “a real Bible man.”

Amanda remembered Reverend Call’s big booming voice and the bright spots of color that appeared on his waxy cheeks when he got excited. He got excited a lot, so much so that Amanda was afraid of him when she was small. Reverend Call loved to preach on the world Communist threat and the perfidy of Washington liberals. He was a regular guest speaker at the Americanism versus Communism class back when it was required at the junior high, and he had never gotten over the school board’s decision to redesign the class as Issues of Freedom about the time Jimmy Carter was elected.

“Issues of Freedom!” Reverend Call stormed from the pulpit. “God’s issue of the chains on our immortal souls.” As far as he was concerned, the Vietnam War never ended, and he was a mainstay of the MIA chapter in Marietta. The local papers printed his letters to the State Department passionately insisting that thousands of American soldiers were being held in the underground prisons of Hanoi.

“Where’s Hanoi?” asked one of the boys in the Bible class at Holiness. The minister promptly turned as red as a beet, his eyes bulging and his neck swelling, and fell back on a gray metal folding chair.

Apoplexy, not a stroke exactly, more like a blow from God, the minister told his deacons later. “The children are being raised in ignorance. The devil is laying seeds in their hearts.” Tears leaked from his bloodshot eyes.

“You’re tired,” one of the deacons said. “You need a rest.”

“The devil never sleeps,” Reverend Call intoned. His mouth was slack and wet. “God doesn’t nap.”

“Just a few weeks,” he was told. He closed his eyes and put his hands over his face.