Walking Across Egypt (3 page)

"You want to walk over there?" asked Alora.

"Naw. I've seen a dogcatcher before."

Lamar finished drying the last dish.

"How about pulling me over there so I can tell you where to put them," said Mattie.

Lamar walked over, took hold of the arms to the rocker and slid Mattie from the den into the kitchen.

"See that cabinet right there?" said Mattie. "No, the one beside it. That's right. The dishes go on the bottom shelf in there. The glasses right above. That's right. Now, put those pans under the sink. Okay. Now just drop the knives and forks in that drawer; no, the one beside it. Okay. Now would you just sort of wipe up there around the sink?"

Lamar cleaned up, then hung the dish rag and towel behind the cabinet door beneath the sink.

"I thank you," said Mattie.

"You're welcome, but we got to get you out of that chair. I think I ought to cut through the back bottom there with a saw or take it apart somehow."

"I don't want you to have to cut it."

"Well, let me see if there's some way I can ... I could saw it right at the back here and it could be fixed back so you'd never know—glue it and brace it on the inside."

"Well, the saw's hanging in the back of the garage," said Mattie. "I don't know what else to do. Cut the light on there by the door."

Lamar got the saw from the garage, came back, and carefully cut through the bottom back of the chair. He turned Mattie onto her side, and then with Mattie lying on the kitchen floor holding onto the lower ridge of a bottom cabinet door, Lamar pried the rocker apart and pulled it from around her.

Mattie lay on the floor on her side with her knees under her chin. She tried to straighten out.

"Let me help you up," said Lamar. He placed his hands under her arms and lifted her. Mattie remained bent.

"Set me on the couch," she said.

Lamar shuffled with her over to the couch and set her down.

"My Lord," she said. "What a predicament. I have never in my life. What do I owe you?"

"Not a thing. I've just got to get the dog and get going."

"Well, let me feed him." Mattie stood very slowly. She was bent. Lamar reached for her. She kept one hand on the arm of the couch.

"I can make it; just a little stiff. If I take my time I'll straighten out. My Lord. Wait a minute. Let me kind of shake my arms a minute here."

Severely humped, so that she had to look up toward her eyebrows to see straight ahead, Mattie walked slowly by Lamar, into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door. She got out a plate of chicken and a bowl of congealed gravy. With a fork she raked the meat off a chicken leg and thigh into a small pan. She spooned on gravy, then poured it all over two open biscuits in the dog's bowl. Bent over, holding the bowl, she walked to Lamar. "Would you feed him that before you take him?" she said.

Lamar took the bowl. "I guess so. If I got time. I got to get on back."

"He's hungry. He ain't eat since one."

Lamar started out the back door.

"Let it cool a little before you put it down," said Mattie.

Lamar fed the dog, then took him away.

That night, after a long hot bath, Mattie noticed that her back, arm, and leg muscles felt weak—she knew they would be sore in the morning.

She sat at her piano in the living room. On top of the piano was a picture of Paul, her husband, who had died five years earlier; a picture of Robert; one of Elaine, now thirty-eight, unmarried, a twelfth-grade English teacher—gifted and talented; and a picture of the entire family together. The piano was a black studio Wurlitzer—one she and Paul had bought for Robert and Elaine. Robert had taken lessons for two years and quit. Elaine had taken for four. But she, Mattie, played just about every night, sitting on the bench stuffed with old hymn-books, thumbing through the Broadman Hymnal until she found one of the fifteen or twenty hymns she played well. She could read hymns in the easier keys, playing partly by ear.

She played "What a Friend We Have in Jesus," "Blessed Assurance," and "Send the Light." No damage to her arms from the chair accident, she decided. Then she played "To a Wild Rose," not a hymn. She had listened as Elaine learned it years ago and liked it so much she learned it herself, and now played it almost every night.

As she walked to her bedroom, more stiffly than normal, she thought about the little dog. "I'm too old to keep a dog," she said.

Tuesday morning Mattie lay in bed on her back, awake. She turned onto her side, pushed up, swung her legs to the floor, stood, straightened, and raised her arms as high as she could, not very high.

Well, nothing was broken. No sharp pains. But she was sore. She was sure sore. The backs of her legs especially. She walked over to her dresser mirror, pulled her pajama bottoms down to her knees and turned around so she could see the backs of her legs. They were bruised badly. How about that. Wasn't that the most ridiculous thing in the world?

Now, who in the world can I tell? she thought. Well, nobody. That was such a ridiculous thing to do. But it was funny, too. She sat back down on the edge of the bed, looked at Paul's picture on the wall. He would have wanted to keep it a secret. Paul would have been very embarrassed about the whole affair.

She saw herself starting down backwards toward the open chair. She saw her butt going down into the open hole. She smiled, then laughed out loud, stopped the laugh with her hand over her mouth, laughed again. She saw herself crunched down in the rocking chair, her feet straight up. She laughed again, her knotted hands spread behind her on the bed, her head back. She kept laughing, fell back on the bed laughing, held her stomach, laughing. She would have to tell Pearl, her sister. It was so funny. But nobody else. Oh, she was sure sore.

The phone on her bedside table rang.

She turned onto her side, sobered, pushed herself up, and answered.

It was Lamar, the dogcatcher. "Mrs. Rigsbee, you seen my billfold?"

"No. But I haven't been in the kitchen or out in the backyard. I just got up. You're up mighty early."

"Yeah, they called me about this pack of dogs north of town. My billfold fell out of my pocket sometime and the only time I can figure is maybe when I was on the floor there at your house."

"Wait a minute. I'll go look." Mattie, her legs and back sore, walked along the narrow carpeted hall and into the den. She was barefooted, wearing the pink pajamas that Elaine gave her and made her promise to wear because Mattie had been sleeping in just her underwear. Pearl also insisted she wear the pajamas. What if you died in your sleep in just your underwear? Pearl had said.

There it was. A black billfold lying on the floor right there beside the big armchair, next to the rocker. She picked it up and took it over to the kitchen phone.

"It's right here. Was right here on the floor. I'll keep it for you."

"Thanks. I'll be by afterwhile."

"I'm a little sore this morning."

"I guess you are."

"But thank goodness nothing's broke. Listen, you come on at about 11:30 and I'll have you a little bite to eat."

"Well ... I got to, ah ... I got to be out that way. Maybe I could. What you going to have?"

" 'What am I going to have?' 'I don't like butter, is your meat lean?'"

"What?"

"It's a saying. What Sukie Smith said one time. She was picky. We always remembered it. If you want something to eat you come on around 11:30; I'll have something either way."

"Okay, maybe I will."

"Well, you come on. Bye."

"Bye."

I bet he comes, thought Mattie. She looked at his billfold, beside the phone. Thick, heavy looking. She shouldn't look in it. She wouldn't.

Let's see, she thought, I got soup, vegetables. I ought to cook a little something extra. I got them potatoes. Potato salad. I hadn't done any potato salad in I don't know when. And I can make that hamburger into a meatloaf easy enough.

She walked back down the hall, put on her green housecoat, her slippers, and sweater, put the bedroom phone back on the hook, walked back to the kitchen, lifted the cast-iron frying pan from beneath the sink, got bacon from the refrigerator, pulled out three slices, separated them, carefully placed them into the pan, cut the eye on, struck a match, stuck it under the pan, cut the flame back, and got out the eggs. Cook the bacon slow, starting in a cold pan.

After breakfast, she put on the water to boil, peeled, cut potatoes, dropped them into the water. She wasn't going to be overcome by a little soreness. Alora would do a little something to her foot, say, and there she'd be sitting with it propped up—days at a time. Overcome. Mat-tie was not that way. If something was sore, she kept it moving to get the soreness out. Nobody in her family—unless they'd married in—had ever stayed still for anything to get well. Course a lot of them were dead now too, but not from just sitting. Some had died young—when that wasn't so unusual. She and Pearl were the only two left.

When the potato salad was all ready she looked in the cabinet for paprika. She always liked to sprinkle a little paprika on her potato salad for color. Tasted good, too. Ah, there it was.

She sprinkled.

That stuff's turned a little dark, I believe. It's sure turned a little dark. I didn't know I'd had it in there that long. What in the world? Let's see what it tastes like.

Hot... What...? Chili powder!

My goodness to gracious.

Mattie found a spoon, scraped away the chili powder, and found the paprika.

Have mercy. She would tell Pearl. Pearl would die laughing. She would tell Pearl—tell her that first and then about the chair.

Mattie thought about the chair. She started laughing again. She put both hands on the counter at the sink and, laughing, looked out through the window into her backyard. She felt the soreness in the backs of her legs, in her back, and shoulders, as she laughed out loud. She laughed harder as she saw herself, feet and arms straight up, rear end all the way down to the floor, stuck. She thought of the Emmett Leftcourt story that Pearl's husband Carl used to tell about how Emmett started out as a police officer, then got to fishing and drinking so much and started going down and quit his job and started waiting tables at the Conventional Cafe at Mattamuskeet, fishing and drinking all the time, and then got fired and kept on going downhill. Carl would tell it, embellish it, about how Emmett got fired and moved in with the old catfishers who lived in a rusted tin-roof shack made from drink cartons and scrap wood. They caught and sold catfish until they had enough money for whiskey. Carl followed Emmett Leftcourt's career, watching him go on downhill, and one day walked by the shack and of all things out there in the front yard Emmett and another man were boiling a sea heron, his long stick-legs sticking straight up out of the pot, and Carl would get so tickled telling this, holding his arms straight up like the heron legs, and then when you thought he was through, Carl would say that a few weeks later a stumbling, dirty, old drunk man walked up to him and—standing still but sort of stumbling, looking down and then up into Carl's eyes—said, "Do you know Emmett Leftcourt?" and Carl said yes and the old drunk said, "You know, he's one of the sorriest men I ever met."

Pearl would try to tell it but never got it as good as Carl. Mattie thought about the sea heron's legs sticking up out of that pot, about herself in the chair. She laughed again, looked down at the billfold.

She picked it up and opened it. There was a twenty-dollar bill and a folded-up something—letter? Stuck in there where the money goes, a folded letter or something on yellow lined notebook paper.

The food was all on the stove; it was 11:00 a.m. He'd probably be by pretty soon. She would see what the yellow paper was. Nobody would ever know. And it wouldn't hurt one thing in the world. He was liable to come in ten minutes or so and if she didn't look now she'd never as long as she lived know whether or not it was a love letter, or what.

dear lamar:

I want you to try to get me out of here If you can sign this thing they'll put me in your Custedy Some of the people here are real Shits They will put us in a solatary confinement room if we mess up. They done had me in there twice and I didn't do a thing. How are You doing these days, fine I hope. Lamar, all you have to do is sign this paper. If I got a legal guardian everything will be fine Ok? You can tell them I'm going to live with you, then there wont be no more trouble for me.

SINCERELY YOURS,

WESLEY.

Such language, thought Mattie. The hack doorbell rang. A wave of panic swept over her, hurting the backs of her legs. She folded the letter quickly, stuck it back into the billfold. "Come on in."

Alora came in the back door. Mattie noticed that Alora's hair had been freshly dyed black. It would look so much better natural, she thought, and she wondered why Alora didn't either lose weight or buy larger pants suits.

Lord, I hope she don't stay long, thought Mattie. I got to tend my food.