Soldiers Pay (11 page)

With love

Julian.

“What is that child's name, Joe?”

Mrs. Powers in one of her straight dark dresses stood on the porch in the sun. The morning breeze was in her hair, beneath her clothing like water, carrying sun with it: pigeons about the church spire leaned upon it like silver and slanting splashes of soft paint. The lawn sloping fenceward was grey with dew, and a negro informal in undershirt and overalls passed a lawn mower over the grass, leaving behind his machine a darker green stripe like an unrolling carpet. Grass sprang from the whirling blades and clung wetly to his legs.

“What child?” Gilligan, uncomfortable in new hard serge and a linen collar, sat on the balustrade moodily smoking. For reply she handed him the letter and with his cigarette tilted in the corner of his mouth he squinted through the smoke, reading.

“Oh, the ace. Name's Lowe.”

“Of course: Lowe. I tried several times after he left us but I never could recall it.”

Gilligan returned the letter to her. “Funny kid, ain't he? So you scorned my affections and taken his, huh?”

Her windy dress moulded her longly. “Let's go to the garden so I can have a cigarette.”

“You could have it here. The Padre wouldn't mind, I bet.”

“I'm sure he wouldn't. I am considering his parishioners. What would they think to see a dark strange woman smoking a cigarette on the rectory porch at eight o'clock in the morning?'

“They'll think you are one of them French what-do-you-call-'ems the Loot brought back with him. Your good name won't be worth nothing after these folks get through with it.”

“My good name is your trouble, not mine, Joe.”

“My trouble? How do you mean?”

“Men are the ones who worry about our good names, because they gave them to us. But we have other things to bother about, ourselves. What you mean by a good name is like a dress that's too flimsy to wear comfortably. Come on, let's go to the garden.”

“You know you don't mean that,” Gilligan told her. She smiled faintly, not turning her face to him.

“Come on,” she repeated, descending the steps.

They left a delirium of sparrows and the sweet smell of fresh grass behind them and were in a gravelled path between rose bushes. The path ran on beneath two formal arching oaks; lesser roses rambling upon a wall paralleled them and Gilligan following her long strides trod brittle and careful. Whenever he was among flowers he always felt as if he had entered a room full of women: he was always conscious of his body, of his walk, feeling as though he trod in sand. So he believed that he really did not like flowers.

Mrs. Powers paused at intervals, sniffing, tasting dew upon buds and blooms, then the path passed between violet beds to where against a privet hedge there would soon be lilies. Beside a green iron bench beneath a magnolia she paused again, staring up into the tree. A mockingbird flew out and she said:

“There's one, Joe. See?”

“One what? Bird nest?”

“No, a bloom. Not quite, but in a week or so. Do you know magnolia blooms?”

“Sure: not good for anything if you pick 'em. Touch it, and it turns brown on you. Fades.”

“That's true of almost everything, isn't it?”

“Yeh, but how many folks believe it? Reckon the Loot does?”

“I don't know. . . . I wonder if he'll have a chance to touch that one?”

“Why should he want to? He's already got one that's turning brown on him.”

She looked at him, not comprehending at once. Her black eyes, her red mouth like a pomegranate blossom. She said then: “Oh! Magnolia. . . . I'd thought of her as a—something like an orchid. So you think she's a magnolia?”

“Not an orchid, anyways. Find orchids anywhere but you wouldn't find her in Illinoy or Denver, hardly.”

“I guess you are right. I wonder if there are anymore like her anywhere?”

“I dunno. But if there ain't there's already one too many.”

“Let's sit down a while. Where's my cigarette?” She sat on the bench and he offered her his paper pack and struck a match for her. “So you think she won't marry him, Joe?”

“I ain't so sure anymore. I think I am changing my mind about it. She won't miss a chance to marry what she calls a hero—if only to keep somebody else from getting him.” (Meaning you, he thought.)

(Meaning me, she thought.) She said: “Not if she knows he's going to die?”

“What does she know about dying? She can't even imagine herself getting old, let alone imagining anybody she is interrested in dying. I bet she believes they can even patch him up so it won't show.”

“Joe, you are an incurable sentimentalist. You mean you think she'll marry him because she is letting him think she will and because she is a good woman. You are quite a gentle person, Joe.”

“I ain't!” he retorted with warmth. “I am as hard as they make 'em: I got to be.” He saw she was laughing at him and he grinned ruefully. “Well, you got me that time, didn't you?” He became suddenly serious. “But it ain't her I'm worrying about. It's his old man. Why didn't you tell him how bad off he was?”

She was quite feminine and Napoleonic:

“Why did you send me on ahead instead of coming yourself? I told you I'd spoil it.” She flipped her cigarette away and put her hand on his arm. “I didn't have the heart to, Joe. If you could have seen his face! and heard him! He was like a child, Joe. He showed me all of Donald's things. You know: pictures, and a slingshot, and a girl's undie and a hyacinth bulb he carried with him in France. And there was that girl and everything. I just couldn't. Do you blame me?”

“Well, it's all right now. It was a kind of rotten trick, though, to let him find it all out before them people at the station. We done the best we could, didn't we?”

“Yes, we did the best we could. I wish we could do more.” Her gaze brooded across the garden where in the sun beyond the trees, bees were already at work. Across the garden, beyond a street and another wall you could see the top of a pear tree like a branching candelabra, closely bloomed, white, white . . . . She stirred, crossing her knees. “That girl fainting, though. What do you——”

“Oh, I expected that. But here comes Othello, like he was looking for us.”

They watched the late conductor of the lawn mower as he shuffled his shapeless shoes along the gravel. He saw them and halted.

“Mist' Gillmum, Rev'un say fer you to come to de house.”

“Me?”

“You Mist' Gillmum, ain't you?”

“Oh, sure,” He rose. “Excuse me, ma'am. You coming, too?”

“You go and see what he wants. I'll come along after a while.”

The negro had turned shuffling on ahead of him and the lawn mower had resumed its chattering song as Gilligan mounted the steps. The rector stood on the veranda. His face was calm but it was evident he had not slept.

“Sorry to trouble you, Mr. Gilligan, but Donald is awake, and I am not familiar with his clothing as you are. I gave away his civilian things when he—when he—”

“Sure, sir,” Gilligan answered in sharp pity for the grey faced man. He don't know him yet! “I'll help him.”

The divine, ineffectual, would have followed, but Gilligan leaped away from him up the stairs. He saw Mrs. Powers coming from the garden and he descended to the lawn, meeting her.

“Good morning, Doctor,” she responded to his greeting. “I have been looking at your flowers. I hope you don't mind?”

“Not at all, not at all, my dear madam. An old man is always flattered when his flowers are admired. The young are so beautifully convinced that their emotions are admirable: young girls wear the clothes of their older sisters who require clothes, principally because they do not need them themselves, just for fun, or perhaps to pander an illusion of the male; but as we grow older what we are loses importance, giving place to what we do. And I have never been able to do anything well save to raise flowers. And that is. I think, an obscure emotional house-wifery in me: I had thought to grow old with my books among my roses: until my eyes became too poor to read longer I would read, after that I would sit in the sun. Now, of course, with my son at home again, I must put that by. I am anxious for you to see Donald this morning. You will notice a marked improvement.”

“Oh, I'm sure I shall,” she answered, wanting to put her arms around him. But he was so big and so confident. At the corner of the house was a tree covered with tiny white-bellied leaves like a mist, like a swirl of arrested silver water. The rector offered his arm with heavy gallantry.

“Shall we go in to breakfast?”

Emmy had been before them with narcissi, and red roses in a vase repeated the red of strawberries in flat blue bowls. The rector drew her chair. “When we are alone Emmy sits here, but she has a strange reluctance to dining with strangers, or when guests are present.”

Mrs. Powers sat and Emmy appeared briefly and disappeared, for no apparent reason. At last there came slow feet on the staircase slanting across the open door. She saw their legs, then their bodies crossed her vision and the rector rose as they appeared in the door. Good morning, Donald,” he said.

(That's my father? Sure, Loot. That's him.) “Good morning, sir.”

The divine stood huge and tense and powerless as Gilligan helped Mahon into his seat.

“Here's Mrs. Powers, too, Loot.”

He turned his faltering puzzled gaze upon her. “Good morning,” he said, but her eyes were on his father's face. She lowered her gaze to her plate feeling hot moisture against her lids. What have I done? she thought, what have I done?

She tried to eat but she could not, watching Mahon, awkward with his left hand, peering into his plate, eating scarcely anything, and Gilligan's healthy employment of knife and fork, and the rector tasting nothing, watching his son's every move with grey despair.

Emmy appeared again with fresh dishes. Averting her face she set the dishes down awkwardly and was about to flee precipitately when the rector looking up stopped her. She turned in stiff self-conscious fright, hanging her head.

“Here's Emmy, Donald,” his father said.

Mahon raised his head and looked at his father. Then his puzzled gaze touched Gilligan's face and returned to his plate, and his hand rose slowly to his mouth. Emmy stood for a space and her black eyes became wide and the blood drained from her face slowly. Then she put the back of one red hand against her mouth and fled, blundering into the door.

I can't stand this. Mrs. Powers rose unnoticed save by Gilligan and followed Emmy. Upon a table in the kitchen Emmy leaned bent almost double, her head cradled in her red arms. What a terrible position to cry in, Mrs. Powers thought, putting her arms around Emmy. The girl jerked herself erect, staring at the other. Her face was wrung with weeping, ugly.

“He didn't speak to me!” she gasped.

“He didn't know his father, Emmy. Don't be silly.” She held Emmy's elbows, smelling harsh soap. Emmy clung to her.

“But me, me! He didn't even look at me!” she repeated.

It was on her tongue to say Why should he? but Emmy's blurred sobbing and her awkward wrung body; the very kinship of tears to tears, something to cling to after having been for so long a prop to others. . . .

Outside the window was a trellised morning-glory vine with a sparrow in it. and clinging to Emmy, holding each other in a recurrent mutual sorrow she tasted warm salt in her throat.

Damn, damn, damn, she said amid her own racking infrequent tears.

IV

In front of the post office the rector was the centre of an interested circle when Mr. Saunders saw him. The gathering was representative, embracing the professions with a liberal leavening of those inevitable casuals, cravatless, overalled or unoveralled, who seem to suffer no compulsions whatever, which anything from a captured still to a negro with an epileptic fit or a mouth organ attracts to itself like atoms to a magnet, in any small southern town—or northern town or western town probably.

“Yes, yes, quite a surprise,” the rector was saying. “I had no intimation of it, none whatever, until a friend with whom he was travelling—he is not yet fully recovered, you see—preceded him in order to inform me.”

(One of them airy-plane fellers.)

(S'what I say: if the Lord had intended folks to fly around in the air He'd 'a' give 'em wings.)

(Well, he's been closter to the Lord'n you'll ever git.)

This outer kindly curious fringe made way for Mr. Saunders.

(Closter'n that feller' ever git, anyway. Guffaws.) This speaker was probably a Baptist.

Mr. Saunders extended his hand.

“Well, Doctor, we are mighty glad to hear the good news.”

“Ah, good morning, good morning.” The rector took the proffered hand in his huge paw. “Yes, quite a surprise. I was hoping to see you. How is Cecily this morning?” he asked in a lower tone. But there was no need, no lack of privacy. There was a general movement into the post office. The mail was in and the window had opened and even those who expected no mail, who had received no mail in months must need answer one of the most enduring compulsions of the American nation. The rector's news had become stale in the face of the possibility of a stamped personal communication of some kind, of any kind.

Charlestown, like numberless other towns throughout the south, had been built around a circle of tethered horses and mules. In the middle of the square was the courthouse—a simple utilitarian edifice of brick and sixteen beautiful Ionic columns stained with generations of casual tobacco. Elms surrounded the courthouse and beneath these trees, on scarred and carved wood benches and chairs the city fathers, progenitors of solid law and solid citizens who believed in Tom Watson and feared only God and drouth, in black string ties or the faded brushed grey and bronze meaningless medals of the Confederate States of America, no longer having to make any pretence toward labour, slept or whittled away the long drowsy days while their juniors of all ages, not yet old enough to frankly slumber in public, played checkers or chewed tobacco and talked. A lawyer, a drug clerk and two nondescripts tossed iron discs back and forth between two holes in the ground. And above all brooded early April sweetly pregnant with noon.