Love and Lament (32 page)

“I can’t help it,” he said. “I’m married to my job—it’s a good thing I like it.” He put on his slouch hat at the door, winked at Mary Bet and nodded to the preacher.

For a while they sat in Hooper’s parlor, she listening as Mr. Jenkins explained his sermon in greater detail—after all, she had asked. Now, listening to his strong deep voice, so confident and reassuring, even if what he said seemed less than satisfying, she thought he was not a bad man at all. She smiled encouragement as he shifted in his chair, gathering his thoughts, the fingers of his right hand like tentacles feeling the air.

“A young woman of beauty, such as yourself,” he said, staring ahead at the mantelpiece, “can cause a man even of Solomon’s greatness to falter. Or she can be a foundation for a man’s life and work.”

She watched him as he talked, his erect back and thrust-out chin giving him the look of a man who does not know himself; yet his large blue eyes and delicate mouth put her in mind of a boy forced against his will to become a man. She thought: Today I won’t be judgmental. “That’s nice of you to say,” she told him. “But I don’t put myself alongside the concubines of Solomon.”

“Oh, no no, you misunderstand my meaning entirely,” he said. He looked both indignant and flustered, his red face brightening a shade or two, and she was ashamed for upsetting him, and disappointed as well, for she knew that now he would feel the need to explain himself in a long-winded, didactic way, as though he had to hear the sound of the elegant sentences forming in his mind as it explored every possible ramification and counterargument and parenthetical digression along the way.

Before he got too far into his response, she said, “I thought we could take a walk about town.” This met with an enthusiastic comment about the value of exercise and the companionship of a bright young woman being a great boon to the weary mind of a circuit preacher.

They walked up the Durham Road, and then down around the courthouse and out a ways on the Hartsoe City Road, but the dust
from passing buggies made them decide to turn off. Mr. Jenkins said hello to everyone they passed but didn’t feel inclined to stop and talk, which suited Mary Bet just fine. She didn’t mind that he seemed to be showing her off as a walking companion, or the possibility that a walk seemed better to him than a ride because of the impropriety of riding alone with a young lady. In both cases there was an assumption that they were courting, and she decided she didn’t mind that either.

They took the apple-tree lane down past the shanties of colored town, and Mr. Jenkins said, “Whenever I can, I like to see how the Nigras are living. It gives me an appreciation for everything we have, even in the hardest of times. My father taught me that.”

“My father believed that the Negroes wouldn’t get anywhere without better schools.”

“Ah, but where do we want them to get, Miss Hartsoe? If we’re not careful, we’ll be working for the black race. I do not exaggerate. I have terrible visions and dreams, let me tell you. You see that pickaninny right there, playing in the dirt with no pants on? He could be the boss of your very own son someday.”

The child in question paused in his mud-pie-making to look up at them with wide-open eyes. Mary Bet waved, and the boy waved back. “That’s Elvira Green’s boy. They’re good people. Her husband, Roscoe, works at the train station.”

“Yes, but don’t doubt for a minute that the boy, if given a chance, could be the sheriff.”

Mary Bet laughed. “I don’t see how, unless white people voted for him. He could be a teacher, though, or even a principal, if he had the proper schooling. And that’s a good thing, don’t you think so?”

“As long as he’s principal of the colored school, then it’s a fine thing. But what if he was principal of the white school?”

She laughed again and shook her head. “Now you’re just pulling my leg. How can a black man be principal of a white school?”

“There’s talk about that very sort of thing. The Nigras up north are organizing, and if we’re not careful it’ll happen right here. I believe in self-improvement for the colored race, but my question is, where does it end? The colored people of Haw County are docile enough now, but I often pray that, for their own good, they will not try to rise above their God-given station.”

As they headed back up toward the courthouse, Mary Bet could feel the perspiration pooling at the base of her neck and under her arms, and she thought that it was not just the heat but the closeness of this man, who seemed very unlike a preacher when he was not in church. There was some kind of perfume he wore that she had not noticed earlier. It made him seem dandified in a way that was unattractive to her, and the way he worried about colored people—she wanted to like him, but he seemed so cautious, so worried about the future that she thought he would make a stern and unforgiving father, afraid of his children making a misstep and reflecting poorly upon himself. It was silly to have such thoughts, she told herself. They were just taking a walk.

The correspondence they kept up over the next few weeks was friendly on her part, courtly and mannered on his. Nothing in his letters had but the faintest whiff of romantic interest in her, and she could only conclude that he was either not interested or was showing such caution as he felt necessary to protect his own reputation and feelings; of course, it was possible he was only thinking of her feelings and was afraid of scaring her off.

He came again the following month, on Presbyterian Sunday, and Mary Bet decided she would hold back when the service was over so that he would have a chance to talk with her if he wanted to. He’d said he looked forward to seeing her and that “perhaps we could visit some.” When she offered her gloved hand, he squeezed it in both of his and gave her such a warm look she felt a tingle run through her body. Was it the warmth of the Holy Ghost, so lately
voiced in this man’s sermon? Or was Mr. Jenkins genuinely in love with her? She decided to tell him the truth. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all week long,” she said.

He nodded and glanced about, as though to see if anyone were listening. “As have I,” he replied. “Will you be dining at your cousin’s?”

“No,” she nodded toward Amanda, who was leaning on her braces down on the flagstone walkway, looking miserably hot with the sun beating upon her hat. “We’ll be going back to Mrs. Gooch’s. But I have no plans for afterwards.”

“I’m having dinner with the Fred Fikes,” he said. “But then I could stop by and we might ride out to Hackett’s Mill, if you’d like.”

He said it casually, as if he were only offering out of kindness. She couldn’t help being just a little sassy. “I’d be honored to accompany you,” she said, mimicking his formal tone—he’d told her he had studied in England.

At the appointed hour she was ready and sitting on Mrs. Gooch’s narrow front porch, rocking nervously and fanning her face with her navy-blue sun hat. He was only a few minutes late and she was gratified to find that he was apologetic, and even a little flustered. He helped her into the buggy, and then pulled himself up in one graceful motion and stirred the horse into movement. When she asked him questions, he seemed preoccupied, uncharacteristically quiet, until she began to think she was imposing on his time—that, or he was just being rude. Finally, she said, “I hope you didn’t have something more important this afternoon, Mr. Jenkins.”

“Please call me Stuart,” he told her. He cleared his throat, but did not look at her.

“All right, then,” she said. “Did you have something else to do today, Stuart?”

“No,” he said. He glanced at her, his face so dark red it reminded her of Amanda’s birth stain.

At a grove of pines before the pond at Hackett’s, he stopped the horse and alighted. He helped her down briskly, as if he wanted to get the job over with, and began walking toward the pond. He turned briefly to see if she were following. “Stuart,” she said, “what is the matter? You seem worried about something.”

He nodded and came forward so suddenly she pulled away. His eyes were large and fearful, empty blue orbs that seemed to reflect more than they saw, and his breath was heavy and shaggy. He put his arms about her and drew her tight to himself, his body shuddering. He kissed the hair that lay flat against her neck and then her cheek, and as he tried to kiss her mouth she found herself pushing him away. She couldn’t see or breathe, he was such an unknown weight on her. She just wanted space between their bodies.

He suddenly pulled back and dropped his arms. “I thought—” he stopped and put the back of his hand to his lips. “I thought you—”

“Mr. Jenkins,” she said. “Stuart. I wasn’t expecting you to be so, so bold like that. You caught me by surprise is all.” She could see now he was deeply embarrassed and ashamed and angry; he stood looking out at the pond, his arms hanging stiffly by his sides. A bullfrog roared somewhere off in the cattails at the pond’s edge, and mating dragonflies flitted about the lily pads. The dance of life seemed so simple, and yet it was so impossibly complex for people it was a wonder, she thought, that children ever came into the world.

“It’s all right, Stuart,” she said. “I do like you.”

“Just not in that way, apparently.”

She hesitated, because she wanted to get her words just right, but she could see he was reading doubt in her hesitation. He said, “I’ve made a fool of myself, and you must think that I’m a cad. I must tell you that I’m not only a man of God, but a man with feelings, just like every man. There’s never been a man—except Jesus—without such feelings.”

“Yes,” she said, and because she felt pity for his misguided attempts and gratitude for how he had recoiled at himself rather than her, she said, “I think you’re a wonderful man and preacher, both.”

“You don’t want to see me again, though, do you? And I suppose my reputation has lost some of its shine around these parts?”

“I wouldn’t breathe a word about this. And I do want to see you again.” But as soon as she said this she pictured saying it to Hooper Teague, her own cousin.

“Are you all right?” he asked. She nodded. He suddenly seemed like such a comical man, with his neat cravat and gray jacket still intact on a warm day. She didn’t mind his attentions, and though she didn’t want to lead him on she offered her bare hand for him to hold.

They stood there hand in hand staring out at the pond. Finally he ventured, “I can call on you again, then?”

“Of course you can. But I don’t want to marry anybody, at least not for a long time, so I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

He nodded. “Mary Bet. May I call you that?”

“Yes, you may,” she said.

“You are a very independent young woman, and I admire that, just as I admire your candor. I don’t know many people, male or female, and certainly not any your age, with such forthrightness and perception. If I could venture a guess, I’d say that the difficulties of your youth have made you wiser than most.”

“Well I don’t know about that,” she replied. “I think everybody has his cross to bear, even the people who seem to have every blessing you can imagine.”

They went and sat on a wide sycamore stump and Mr. Jenkins spoke to her of his ambition to become a writer of inspirational books, filled with true stories of the wonders of God’s eternal plan. He told her one such story at length, and after some time Mary Bet
said that she had best be getting on home. And so they rode back together, the strain gone from Mr. Jenkins and a new understanding between him and Mary Bet, and a new uncertainty as well. For a while he told stories, and then together they sang hymns. But she was picturing Siler on the tracks again, now holding his arms up as if trying to warn her against something, as if to keep her from going where he had gone.

Mary Bet refused Mr. Jenkins’s further invitations, yet she was surprised when, six months later, an invitation to his wedding arrived in the mail. He married a distant cousin, a fat, phlegmatic young woman named Helena George from Elizabethtown, and he moved to the southeastern part of the state.

NINE YEARS PASSED
.

It was strange how life could move so fast and yet be unchanging in the things that mattered. Mary Bet remained an unmarried clerk at the Haw County Courthouse. She went out on a couple of raids—to apprehend a drunken brawler for stealing a wagon full of illegal whiskey that he claimed he was bringing to the authorities, and a flimflammer from South Carolina who was selling bogus burial insurance to poor folks in several counties. But mostly she stayed at the courthouse, doing a job she had been at nearly as long as anyone could remember.

She made friends, went to their weddings, saw them have babies, attended church picnics and baptisms, laughed over jokes and stories, and went out to Love’s Creek once a month to decorate the graves. It seemed as though she arrived overnight from being a girl to a middle-aged woman. The years rushed by as if they were in a hurry, and the world with them. And she was caught up in the whirlwind of time whether she intended to be or not, and the past was swirled together with the present and the future like a dust devil, curling around and around and around.

There were fewer and fewer trips to Hartsoe City, though Clara kept her up on the news: Dr. Slocum bought the first automobile in town, a little two-door runabout with a fold-back cloth top. Then Robert Gray Jr. bought a similar but sportier-looking roadster, and they would chug together up the Raleigh Road, racing by the time they got past the post office. After Ila died, Robert Gray Jr. became a lawyer like his daddy and married a rich widow from Charlotte. Sometimes they came to Williamsboro, and when Mary Bet saw one of them about town her heart would skip a beat, as she remembered her sister and her own crush on him when he was calling on Ila.

Amanda and Mr. Hennesey had a falling out, then patched things up and were married, and when they moved out it took Mrs. Gooch two weeks to find suitable replacements. “You’d think they could’ve had a little more consideration,” she told Mary Bet the night before the wedding, though they’d announced their plans three months ahead. The new boarders were sisters, both schoolteachers, and they pretty much kept to themselves. But it didn’t bother Mary Bet, because she had plenty of friends around town.