Quite a Year for Plums (5 page)

“I felt almost like Joan of Arc,” said Hilma, “and he was the archangel Michael striding up to us through the green.”

“The diminished population of red-cockaded woodpeckers is just one example of the eradication of fire-dependent ecosystems by the exclusion of fire—his work is making that clear,” said Gawain.

“He needs to watch out for Ethel,” said Lucy, and they all peered around the moonflowers into the garden.

“Oh,” said Hilma.

“Oh, Ethel!” said Meade.

“Well, time for me to go home,” said Gawain.

“That nice fan man, Jim Wade,” said Hilma. “So pleasant and cheerful. Why doesn't Ethel…”

“Because she likes to do the choosing,” said Lucy.

“I am reminded of mating insects,” said Meade.

In the garden Ethel held a branch of angel's
trumpet aside and whispered something in Lewis's ear, then she stepped back, laughing. “Now,” she said, “your turn.”

“That Ethel!” snapped Meade, slapping a pair of yellow rubber gloves against the edge of the sink. “Carrying on like that before our very eyes in a bed of poisonous plants.”

“And what will happen to the poor man now?” Hilma sighed. “He doesn't have Roger's strength.”

“I told you we should have invited Roger,” said Meade, thrusting her hands into the rubber gloves. “Then what a nice party it would have been, Roger and Lewis and Gawain discussing the influence of fire on the lives of plants and animals like civilized people.”

“Well,” said Hilma, trying to look on the bright side, “the garden was lovely, the food was good, and it's always a pleasure to see Lucy.”

“I blame it all on the garden,” said Meade. “I have never trusted Datura.”

“I thought you said sex was best when you weren't having it,” said Lucy.

“But I have to check now and then to make sure I'm still right,” said Ethel. She had spent the day with Lewis in the woodpecker woods and she was looking for ticks. So far she had found four. “It was an interesting encounter,” she said. “He's so delightfully strange. He knows more about those birds than he knows about himself.”

“Meade says you remind her of a mating insect” said Lucy.

“Ha,” said Ethel. “Good old Meade. Probably a mantis. No, I always leave them alive, Lucy.”

“Barely,” said Lucy, remembering the Irish Potato Famine.

“He'll get over it,” said Ethel. “They always do.”

It was late at night and he couldn't make the distances work out. He kept losing count and having to begin again. Was this the sickness of love or was it the mothballs in the bird skins making him feel slightly nauseated and dizzy? “It was nice,” she had said. “I enjoyed it. And now I'm going home to my house and you must go home to yours.” They were standing at the edge of the woods. On one side, I-10 stretched all the way to California, and on the other side lay a thousand acres of virgin longleaf with five colonies of maybe the last red-cockaded woodpeckers that would live on earth.

“You have to understand,” she said, as the cars roared by, “I like a kind of fly-by-night love life. Here today, gone tomorrow.” But he did not understand. All he could think of were the thousands of migrating birds that were killed every night when they flew into the guy wires of TV towers.

“There is no hope of recovering the bodies,” said Meade, “in all that muck, so the mourners are tossing flowers into the swamp.” A small plane had crashed in the middle of the Okefenokee Swamp, and television screens were filled with the sad faces
of announcers talking about “human remains.” Meade had been taken with the idea of tossing flowers into the swamp.

“Maybe that's what we should do for Lewis” she said.

“It's not as bad as that” said Lucy reasonably. “He was not strapped into his seat hurtling helplessly through the night sky with one engine burned out.”

“Ethel is a good person, really, at heart—good company, an excellent teacher, a good gardener—she learned that from Roger. She just doesn't have tender feelings for the men she knows,” said Hilma.

“She doesn't like the constrictions of love,” said Lucy.

“Then why does she keep breaking the hearts of these nice men? The song writer from Nashville; poor Jim Wade, the fan man, always so eager for news of Ethel when he sees me; and now Lewis.”

“Sex,” said Lucy.

“Oh,” said Hilma.

“No body parts bigger than an elbow have been found,” said Meade.

It was June, but Hilma and Meade were reluctant to give up their May adventures, and they had invited Lewis to present a little program on the life and habits of the red-cockaded woodpecker. But Meade fidgeted in her chair and Hilma felt her mind begin to wander. In May he had come striding out of the green like an angel, with science, the new bracken fern, and all the promise of summer on his side. But now, in her living room, standing beside the portable
chalkboard she had dragged down from the attic, he seemed like nothing more than an ordinary man. Hilma was irritated by the way he kept erasing his little sketches with the heel of his hand, leaving damp smudges on the chalkboard so that the blurred lines of a previous diagram showed through his current drawing, muddling his points. Lewis too seemed edgy and dispirited. He kept glancing furtively out into the garden, as if he expected to see Ethel step out of the bed of Datura in her little flowered dress. But no one could stand to be outside in this heat. In the white garden the blooms from the night before were drooping and spent. The Nicotiana hung in slimy wads from its stems, and the petals of the Datura sagged, battered and bruised by the wings of the hummingbird moths.

T
he dog flopped down on the floor, and one ear and a limp black lip spread out along the linoleum. “Don't put your chair down on that dog's ear,” said Ethel, but there was a yelp and a cry and the boy leaped up and the chair fell over backward and the dog scrambled to his feet and walked around in little circles looking embarrassed and ashamed.

“I'm sorry. Bud, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to,” Andy said, hugging the old dog.

“Don't worry about that old dog,” said Eula. “He'll just find him another cool spot. Andy, Bud, get out of my way, I'm coming through with something hot.” And the old dog wandered across the room and lay down in the doorway, looking out with tired, sad eyes at Eula, Ethel, Tom, and Tom's son Andy, who had come all the way from California to spend the summer with his daddy.

“That is one sorry dog,” said Tom.

“He's not a sorry dog,” said Andy. “He's a good
dog—” and then across the room to the dog, “aren't you. Bud?” The dog whacked the floor once with his tail in acknowledgment and crossed his front feet.

“Well,” said Eula, “you spend enough time with a dog, you come to love him anyway. It don't matter if he is sorry.”

“The money you have poured into that sorry dog,” said Tom, “rabies shots, heartworm treatment, worms.”

“He's not a sorry dog,” said Andy, and his voice rose shrilly. “He's a good dog!”

“I want Andy to come with Jim Wade and me on a fan trip,” said Ethel, “up near Abbeville. He needs some parts—blades, a grill. He's trying to put together a—”

“Goddamned sorry dog,” said Tom.

“Tom,” said Eula, holding on to the edge of the table with both hands.

“You should have left him down at the dump where you found him,” said Tom.

“Tom,” said Eula. But it was too late. Andy jumped up from the table and ran out of the room. They heard a screen door slam.

Tom began viciously poking food around on his plate. “That's his mama,” he said. “His mama has done that to him. And what am I supposed to do about it? I spend, what, three months a year with him?”

“Tom, he's just a little boy,” said Eula.

But Tom stabbed a potato with his fork and began gesturing with it. “I send her all this money,” he said, “and she raises him up to be like that. He don't like to hunt because he can't stand the sight of blood, he
don't like to fish because he can't stand to touch something slimy, he can't go out in the woods because he's allergic to poison ivy. So what's he going to do all summer but mope around in this house full of women and sorry dogs eating up my food and painting moss and buttermilk on flowerpots. Hell everybody's allergic to poison ivy!”

“Tom, you're scaring us to death with that potato,” said Ethel. “Either eat it or put it down. Andy and I are riding up to Abbeville with Jim Wade this weekend. He's looking for electric fans.”

“Women, sorry dogs, and nuts,” said Tom.

MAKE YOUR OWN MOSSY FLOWERPOTS!
the directions said,
THEY MAKE GREAT GIFTS FOR YOUR GARDENING FRIENDS!

“But I don't have any gardening friends,” said Andy, peering down into the moss and buttermilk slurry in the bucket. “Pew.” The mixture had been marinating in the sun for two days.

“Honey,” said Ethel, “you go home to California with these mossy flowerpots, gardening friends will come flocking. They'll line the streets. They'll come out of the cracks in the walls at night. Brush it on thick. Buddy Man. Woo, don't you love something that smells that bad!”

Andy sat with his elbows on his knees, moss and buttermilk dribbling off the paintbrush onto the steps. “Everybody I love is divorced,” he said. “You and Roger, Mama and Daddy.”

“Your granny's not divorced,” said Ethel. “Your great-aunt Louise is not divorced.”

“But Granddaddy was killed by a tractor. And Louise is crazy, that's worse.”

“Look on the bright side,” said Eula. “That's what I always do.” And she put her bowl of cucumbers down in her lap and recited:

“But sometimes there can't be a bright side, right. Buddy?” said Ethel, swabbing drools of green buttermilk off the steps. “All your relatives are divorced, dead, or crazy. You put a chair down on your dog's ear, your mama's a thousand miles away, and your daddy is hateful and mean. What's bright about that. Aunt Eula?”

“That dog's ear ain't hurt,” said Eula. “That dog's ear is just fine. Can you stay for supper, Ethel? Beans, corn, tomatoes, a little piece of ham, and these pickles. You could cheer us up.”

“Please, Ethel,” said Andy.

“Can't, Buddy,” said Ethel.

“I'm sorry Ethel couldn't stay to supper,” said Eula. “I think these bread-and-butter pickles turned out good this time. Crunchy, that's the lime.”

“Ethel!” said Tom. “Only one reason why Ethel couldn't stay to supper. Who is it this time—the woodpecker expert, the Yankee boatbuilder, the
songwriter from Nashville, or that nut Jim Wade, the fan man. She don't care. Just so he's got breath and britches.”

“Don't start that, Tom,” said Eula.

“I don't get it,” said Tom. “She had a good man— she had Roger for Chrisake, God's gift to women! I just don't get it.”

“Tom,” said Eula.

“Promiscuous, is what she is,” said Tom.

“She's not!” said Andy, jumping up. “No she's not!” and they heard the screen door slam.

“Jesus!” said Tom. “The dog ain't sorry, Ethel ain't promiscuous, I guess the sun don't rise in the east, I been wrong all my life. Jesus! All I'm doing is telling the truth!”

“Sometimes you don't need to tell the truth, Tom,” said Eula. “Sometimes you just need to let the truth alone.” But Tom shoved his chair back, the screen door slammed again, and out in the yard the truck engine roared.

Even this late at night it was still hot. Andy sat on the steps in the dark, poking at the scummy pots with a stick. The buttermilk was supposed to promote the growth of the moss, which would then coat the pots with a lush, soft green. But so far there was just the black scum, now beginning to mildew. The whole porch smelled like rotten buttermilk.

“It's the heat that makes him that way, Buddy,” Eula said. “Out in the woods all day, in that blistering heat, it boils all his bad thoughts to the surface. Heat makes people mean. You go off with Ethel and Jim
Wade tomorrow, maybe we'll get a rain, cool us off, and when you come back there'll be a change. Every cloud has a silver lining!” she said cheerfully.

But later, as she washed the dishes in the kitchen, she couldn't help but notice that a little pile of bread-and-butter pickles had been left on every plate.

“You may not believe it,” said Jim Wade, “but summer is the best time to pick up old fans.” He was driving his big red van, hunched earnestly over the steering wheel. “People get desperate in this heat, they think they'll be better off with that new model fan from Wal-Mart, a grumbling grandson puts in a window air conditioner for Granny, and the fine old fans end up at the junk stores and flea markets and yard sales.”

Ethel was in the front seat reading the map. Andy was sitting in the back surrounded by fans and parts of fans: a tangle of guards, a stepped base and a bundle of rusty struts, a Gilbert Polar Cub with no motor, and a twelve-inch General Electric with an open S-guard and steel blades. It was hot and dry. The grass beside the road was shriveled and silvery from drought, and in the fields irrigation rigs marched majestically across acres of corn and peanuts, spewing fountains of water into the air.

“That's how I got my Cool Spot. Mr. Martin put a window air conditioner in for an old lady over in Colquitt County, and there it was the next day out at Farr Road Flea Market. Just needed a little blade adjustment, that's why it was running ragged. In August the old lady died of a stroke sitting right in
front of that 5000-Btu air conditioner. She would have been alive today if she'd kept that Cool Spot— it's a gentler cool.”

“Heat makes people mean,” said Andy.

“Heat can kill you,” said Jim Wade. “You'd be surprised at how many fans I've acquired through deaths.”

“No, we wouldn't,” said Ethel, “would we. Buddy? Nothing would surprise Buddy and me.”

The first thing they noticed about the Kountry Kitchen Restaurant and Motel was the pigs, dozens of jigsawed plywood pigs wearing little painted-on outfits—pants, checked shirts, overalls, and ruffled skirts. A sharp stake was nailed to the back of each pig and driven into the dry, hard ground, so that the pigs appeared to float in the air, buoyed up by heat, their dainty, pointed feet hovering just above the parched grass. On shelves inside the restaurant were more pigs—painted ceramic pigs, tiny pigs made out of pecans, and jars of “pickled” pigs made out of panty hose. The walls of the restaurant were covered with incongruous groupings of old tools—a crosscut saw, an egg beater, an adze, an iron, a pair of butter paddles, a tool for crimping sheet metal, a colander, a milk pitcher, and a couple of saws with scroll-cut handles. The waitress set a dish of pickles down on the table. “Sweet or un?” she said.