The Tie That Binds (21 page)

“Aren’t we ever going to be married?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “I was just waiting for you to pop the question.”

“That’s not funny.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No, it is not.”

It was about two o’clock in the morning and we were driving north out of town towards her folks’ place after the annual Fireman’s Ball at the Holt Legion. I was about half drunk, feeling pretty good, but Mavis Pickett wasn’t either of those things. She was stone-cold serious. We had been going out together for at least two years, off and on, and in her view of things our going out to dances and to movies and local parties had not led us anywhere. She was twenty-nine years old. She wanted to be married.

Which is all right, of course. Only I’m still not sure why it was me she chose to be the beneficiary of that. It’s enough to give me pause even now. I wasn’t what you might call a great catch. I was thirty-five. This gut you see here was already beginning to polish my belt buckle. I had knocked around, drunk too much, worked too little, developed bachelor habits. I was never going to be one of your sandhill millionaire successes: I didn’t have the ambition for it. No, if I was ever going to amount to a decent
hill of beans or just a load of dung out of the ordinary, then I should have begun to show some sign of it by then. And I hadn’t. So I don’t know what she saw in me. Maybe it was the challenge. At the time Mavis was working as an L.P.N, at the hospital, and she was used to dealing with cold feet and lost causes. On the other hand, I had good reason to believe she loved me. I’m pretty sure she still does. Probably that clouded her view.

But when a woman like Mavis Pickett loves you, says in so many words that you’re her form of It, who are you to argue? You’re a damn fool if you do. I wasn’t that much of a fool. She was level-headed and good-looking at the same time. That’s an unusual combination. She had thick blond hair and green eyes, and when she was crossed she could run the strong stuff out of your backbone like it was so much water; she didn’t appreciate nonsense. We’ve had plenty of good times in thirteen years together. We’ve managed to survive the bad times. If she wasn’t in town right now waiting for me to come in a couple of hours to pick her up so we can visit the hospital again, she would no doubt tell you that I’m too bullheaded, that sometimes I lock gates that should be left open. I don’t think logically, she would say. On my side, I might wish occasionally that she had a sense of humor—but it’s worked out. For both of us.

At any rate, Mavis got us married toward the end of July 1963. I didn’t put up much opposition. I didn’t even argue a lot when she insisted that I had to do the proper thing, that I come to Sunday dinner and ask her father, old Raymond Pickett, whether he had objections. All I said was:

“How about if I wrote him a postcard?”

“You’re coming to dinner,” she said.

“What if I called him on the phone?”

“No. You will be there at one o’clock. After we get home from church.”

“I’m not going to church. I don’t believe in it.”

“All right. But you will be there for dinner. And you will ask him face-to-face like you’re supposed to.”

“What if he wants to know what my intentions are?”

“Make something up. You’re good at that.”

“Well, Jesus,” I said. “You’re a hard woman.”

“Yes, and you can stop cussing. It’ll be all right. It’ll be just fine.”

“Like hell,” I said.

“You’ll see,” she said.

Mavis was a little old-fashioned that way. She still is. She has a firm idea of how things are meant to be and she usually sees to it that they turn out the way they’re meant to. They certainly did that Sunday afternoon, cooked chicken and all. I put on a white shirt at twelve o’clock and knotted a tie under my chin, then I drove north through Holt’s church traffic and on another eight miles to the Pickett place, where at a heavy oak table supported by a massive pedestal I ate fried chicken and refrained from sucking the grease off my fingers. It was one of those long quiet awkward dinners. Mavis and her mother talked above the platters of food and fine china while her father and I allowed that it was about normal weather for the time of year. Afterwards, according to plan, the womenfolks cleared the table and Raymond Pickett and I removed ourselves to the parlor. We sat down opposite one another.

After a time I said to him, “I suppose you know what I’m doing here.”

“I see you got your tie on,” he said. “I figured there was some reason for it.”

“There is.”

“More than just to eat Mavis’s chicken dinner, you mean.”

You understand the old son of a gun, that old wheat farmer, wasn’t going to help me any. He was enjoying himself; it was better than a Sunday afternoon nap. Usually he was the sober type, steady and humorless as a corner fence post, but now with a straight face he was playing me like a calf.

“That,” I said. “And also to see what you thought of Mavis and me getting married.”

“Tell the truth,” he said, “I haven’t given it much thought.”

“Mavis has,” I said.

“Has she now?”

“Yes. Considerable.”

“And what does she think about it?”

“She’s in favor of it.”

“But you ain’t said nothing about yourself yet. Most times I believe it takes two to get married.”

“Oh, I don’t mind,” I said.

“Well, now,” he said, looking at me. “Well, now. She’s in favor and you say you don’t mind. I guess that’ll have to do, won’t it?”

He kept looking at me. He had the usual white forehead and burnt cheeks and neck that all farmers have, but I could see where Mavis got her eyes. Finally he bent down over his knees and began to untie the laces in his town shoes.

“I don’t like these tie-up shoes,” he said. “Always make my feet hurt. The missus says that’s so I’ll keep awake in church. Most times she’s right too.”

He didn’t take his shoes off—I was still company as yet—but merely loosened the laces good, then he sat up straight again and in his own time blew his nose thoroughly, one nostril then the other, loud, and put the handkerchief back in his hip pocket.

“I don’t know whether you know it, Sanders,” he said,
“but I was well acquainted with your father. I used to see him at farm sales. He was a good man, your father was. I don’t know your mother.”

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t go to farm sales.”

“I suppose not,” he said. “Well, now. About this marriage business—it sounds like Mavis has her mind all made up.”

I nodded.

“She’s like that. So I don’t see where it would do me much good to object even if I wanted to. Can you?”

“No.”

“I thought as much. Well, it’s nice having girls in the house. I believe I’ll miss that.”

That was all he said. We talked about wheat prices and farm futures afterwards. Then the women came into the parlor with us, and after a while Mavis and I excused ourselves and went outside to walk along the windbreak planted westerly towards a slight hill.

“Well?” she said.

“Well what?” I said.

“What’d he say?”

“Weren’t you listening from the kitchen?”

“Yes, but I want you to tell me.”

“Well. He said I was a damn fool to want to marry any daughter of his. You’re too hardhearted, he said. Then he asked me if I had any intentions to speak of.”

“He did not.”

“Sure he did. ‘What are your intentions?’ he said. Go and ask him.”

“All right then, what did you say?”

“Nothing. I didn’t say a word. I told him I didn’t have any intentions. Other than throwing you down in bed every chance I get.”

“You’ve already done that.”

“I plan to do it again. Right now.”

“Don’t be silly. They can still see us from the house.”

“Hell,” I said. “We’re as good as married already, aren’t we?”

“No,” she said. “But we will be. Now stop that and tell me what he said.”

T
HE ONLY
interesting particular I recall now about the wedding was the thing that happened just afterwards. The wedding was over; we had promised our mutual I do’s; Mavis and I were coming down the church steps to get inside my paint-smeared car and away from all the thrown rice. People were gathered in two rows along the steps and sidewalk—her folks; my mother and her last husband, Wilbur Cox; Edith and Lyman Goodnough; a crowd of others, friends. We had just about reached the safety of my car when Vince Higgims, Junior, one of my drinking partners from the Holt Tavern, grabbed Mavis up in his arms and started to run with her. She still had that white dress on and that collection of stiff petticoats, all of which swooped up so high in his arms that you could see her garters and clear to Denver if you wanted to. Vince Jr. was about smothered. I believe his idea was to kidnap her, spirit her away so that I would have to come look for her. Which might have been funny, only Vince didn’t know Mavis enough. In no time Mavis worked one arm free and jammed Vince so hard in the Adam’s apple with her elbow that he dropped down cold like he’d been shot with both barrels. Her white dress and stockinged legs were all over him, the two of them sprawled out on the church curb, so that after they were eventually untangled somebody had to take old Vince over to Doc Schmidt to determine how much damage he had suffered to his throat. It turned out he was lucky; he just had to stay off solids for a week.
Vince said it was enough to scare him off weddings altogether.

When I was sure he was going to at least be able to drink again, Mavis and I got in the car and drove off for the honeymoon. We went across the Continental Divide to Glenwood Springs on the Western Slope and stayed a few days in the great old Hotel Colorado, where Teddy Roosevelt had once spent some time, and we swam with the tourists and arthritic patients in the block-long hot pool that smelled of sulphur. Later we drove up the valley to Aspen and spent an afternoon and an evening amongst the wealthy summer crowd. Then we came home again to this house. Mavis was still working as a nurse at the hospital, but when she wasn’t changing bedpans or taking blood pressures she was remaking our house to please her, and I went back to farming and ranching, cultivating corn, baling hay, and cutting calves. It was nice coming in for supper and finding her still there every evening waiting for me. She looked good and cool and fresh after I’d been outside in the sun away from her all day. After supper we often had the Goodnoughs over to play Rook or went to their place, and about twice a month the four of us went to the Legion dances on Saturday night. Mavis and Edith got to be good friends. She could tell you some things about Edith that I can’t.

Then it was August 1967, and Mavis wasn’t working at the hospital anymore because she was eight months pregnant. Her stomach was swollen and hard, blue veined, tight. I could feel with my hand how the little beggar kicked and swam, did his half gainers and watery flips, like he was showing off for us inside his warm sac, like he believed he was nothing so much as a green frog cavorting for all the world in a horse tank. But I was a little concerned about it too. I knew at thirty-three that it was
somewhat late for Mavis to be carrying her first baby, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She refused to let me worry. She had helped any number of babies get born at the hospital, and now she had all the confidence and all the equipment she needed to bear this one. I could stop worrying. So I did and we were both pleased about the prospect of having a little boy in the house. It would be a boy, we knew that. We were looking forward to it.

B
UT AUGUST
is also traditional Holt County Fair time, and 1967 was no different. It’s considered a big deal around here; everyone and his horse attends, able or not, one hoof in the grave or not. It gives us the opportunity—and the excuse too, I suppose—to visit with folks we haven’t seen for a year.

In the week before the fair is to begin the Lions Club rakes up the accumulated twelve months of trash at the fairgrounds; they burn the trash and the blown-in tumbleweeds behind the buildings, then they loiter in groups, eating Rocky Mountain oysters and potato salad and drinking beer from kegs. Meanwhile the 4-H kids in the county have begun to fit their steers for the judging by clipping the heads and ears of the animals and by ratting the tails into balls; the kids’ mothers and aunts and grandmothers choose their best bread-and-butter pickles for display; somebody begins to work up the racetrack with a disk for the horse races, and somebody else helps the stock contractor unload his bulls and bucking horses at the chutes across the arena from the grandstand. On the afternoon before it is all to begin the carnival people finally pull into town in their battered trucks. They’re usually a bad crew of greasy characters, appearing dog tired, looking as bored with it all as if they have seen it all, and maybe they have. Sweating and cursing, they establish the booths and rides
in the fresh-mowed cheat weeds. So then it’s time. Opening day begins with a parade.

It’s not much of a parade. Just a hometown affair so as not to worry Macy’s, but we went to it that year anyway. This was despite Mavis’s eight-month condition. I told her we ought to skip it.

“We can go this afternoon,” I said. “We can walk around the booths and then you can watch the rodeo from the grandstand.”

“You’re not listening to me,” she said. “I have to get out of this house. I’m sick of this house.”

“All right. I can see that.”

“And you know I won’t be any more uncomfortable in town than I am here. Don’t you know that? But I’ll tell you what it is.”

“What?”

“It’s because you’re embarrassed to be seen with me. I’m getting too big.”

“That’s crazy,” I said. “Vince, Junior, told me the other day when he saw us together—he told me you make me look skinny. Hell, he thought I must be losing some weight, and I told him to keep thinking like that.”

“So what are you talking about?”

“It’s just that I’m afraid you’ll get tired. That’s all. Then I’ll probably have to carry you around on my back and come damn near ruining myself.”

“I won’t get that tired,” she said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Now do we go to the parade together or don’t we?”