Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You Page 18

  “She looked down at him, her expression at first like that of a contending prizefighter who has just brought down a favored champion. I suppose she tried to imagine it as her moment of triumph. But I’ll tell you, Jess, sometimes the body knows better than the mind what the heart’s true feelings are. Ginger looked down at Orlow at her feet, and maybe he’d slain himself for love and maybe he hadn’t, but there he lay motionless, with his face in the earth, and so her consciousness gave way, too, and she also keeled over facedown across the body of her beloved, and there the two of them lay on Bailey Bald, making a human-being X mark in the grass.

  “Of course, the onlookers rushed to where they’d fallen and began tugging them apart and patting and pinching to bring them back to life. It wasn’t long before their eyes opened and they stood up and then fell once more, only into each other’s arms this time. Now their vows were taken and sealed like bonds of iron and they rekindled their ardent courtship and were married in the harvest moon.

  “Everybody who was in that crowd on Bailey Bald said they would never forget the sight of the two lovers passed out on top of each other in the grass. Some of the menfolk said it was about the funniest thing they ever saw, but some of the women said it was the prettiest picture they could ever imagine, a spectacle of passion chaste and pure, but as strong in its current as a waterfall.”

  * * *

  “I like that story,” I told my mother. “But I thought you were going to tell me about how Orlow Jackson died.”

  “That’s a sad story and I’m not in the mood today to recount sad stories.… Tell me, Jess, don’t you think the table looks nice?”

  I thought it looked splendid. Here were set out the fancy flowered plates and cups and saucers we never used, and there was the big cut-glass bowl she had feared I’d destroy, and there were smaller cut-glass dishes for pickles and preserves. The heavy silver cake platter stood waiting for one of Aunt Jincy’s melting pound cakes and the silverware gleamed glorious in the late-morning light. “It looks fine,” I said. “I sort of wish I was invited to this ladies’ party.”

  “Why, you are, of course, Jess,” my mother said. “You can help me hand around the cake. You just shine up your shoes and put on your nice blue wool suit and you’ll make a handsome guest. And that nice red necktie Aunt Holly gave you. She’d like to see you wearing that, and so would I.”

  I hastened to deflect this line of thought. “No, no, that’s all right. Maybe there’ll be some table scraps left for me.” While we stood there for a moment longer, still admiring, I said, “She must have been an awful good shot.”

  “Who?… Oh, you mean Ginger. Well, she wasn’t bad, not bad at all. Of course, I’m a pretty fair hand with a shotgun myself. Did I ever tell you about how I got rid of a pesky red kite that was aggravating my mind? Maybe I’ll tell you that story sometime.”

  “I look forward to it,” I said.

  THE HELPINEST WOMAN

  My mother had commandeered me to help string a bushel of green beans. There we sat, all through the amiable summer afternoon, she and my grandmother and I, tugging off stray leaves and vine stems, flicking away the nubbly yellow worms that clung to the hulls and twirling the long runner beans end to end as we unzipped their spines. The open porch smelled like a fresh-turned garden.

  Our talk fastened upon religion. My grandmother had a monstrous sweet tooth for sanctified chatter. She had been thinking about the virtues, she explained, and had come to admire charity most particularly. Of course, all the virtues were ace qualities; there was no danger she’d undervalue patience or fortitude, and especially not temperance, but on this bright afternoon it was charity that had captured her affection.

  My mother kept her close company. She liked any religious talk that might throw her personal qualities into a flattering light. But she was chary of ungrounded generalizations and insisted upon concrete examples. If there was someone we knew who embodied a salient virtue, we should examine this paragon. But we should pay even closer attention when some unfortunate acquaintance was discovered to be in thrall to a horrid vice; this specimen deserved the most minute examination. My grandmother enjoyed lauding the virtues, my mother delighted in excoriating the vices, and I am convinced that neither of them ever thought that all their palaver about religion provided only a pious excuse for flavorsome gossip.

  The conversation took a leisurely turn down memory lane—which for these two was a commodious Appian Way. My grandmother commenced a roll call of folks she had known who were given to deeds of Christian charity and loving-kindness. Some of these names I knew in the flesh, but as she more thoroughly ransacked the past, I fell behind and the names accrued a mist of legend. They turned into names that were no longer popular among the newborn: Gertrude, Emmaline, Dovey, Hepzibah, Flora, and even the blessed title itself—Charity. But all of the latter name-bearers were rejected sorrowfully as having failed the promise of their cognomen.

  As I listened to their research, I noted an interesting fact. Not one single example of charity they brought to light sported a masculine name. I thought I might ask why, but then decided—as I often did when in their company—that mousy discretion was a better plan than foolhardy valor.

  Then they both lit upon a name at once, like two dragonflies coming to rest on the same touch-me-not. “Angela Newcome,” my grandmother murmured, and my mother smiled one of her “Lord have mercy on that poor soul” half smiles and shook her head.

  “Who is Angela Newcome?” I asked. “I never heard of her.”

  “Was,” my mother replied. “She has gone on to her reward.”

  “In heaven,” my grandmother said.

  “Oh yes, in heaven.… She’ll be teaching harp lessons, I think.”

  “And if the streets are paved with gold,” my grandmother said, “I feel sorry for the poor angel that has to keep them clean.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because that angel will have a lot of help,” my mother said.

  “All the help that could ever be needed,” my grandmother said.

  I asked why again, hoping to unstopper the story jug.

  * * *

  “Well,” my mother told me, “it’s because Angela Newcome was brimful and overflowing with Christian charity. Folks in the Blue Creek community where she lived called her ‘the Helpinest Woman’ because she never missed out on a chance to give aid and comfort to whoever she could, kinfolk or neighbors or nodding acquaintances or pure rank strangers. If you had a touch of the flu and needed someone to run an errand for you, Angela was right there. If you needed somebody to mind your younguns while you worked in the fields, she’d stay at your house all day and have a good hot meal on the table when you came to supper. If she was here right now, she’d be helping us string these beans. Then she’d wash them in the sink and sweep this greenery off the floor here and gather it up and take it to the hog lot.”

  “She’d help us untie our aprons,” my grandmother put in.

  “And hang them up for us in the hallway,” my mother added.

  “And offer to wash and iron them.”

  “And find where they might need any little bit of mending and offer to work her needle after walking five miles to a store to get the exact color thread to match these old shabby workday aprons and inquire if we wouldn’t like a little red or green rickrack around the bottoms and to edge the pockets.”

  “And then help us with the cooking and canning,” my grandmother said. “Now you’d think we were talking about a big stout lady, wouldn’t you? But Angela Newcome was just a little mite of a body. Wouldn’t run up over five foot two or so and wouldn’t weigh hardly a hundred. But she just never gave out, never sat down to rest a minute or survey what she’d done already. You know, though, Cora, I can’t remember how her face was favored.…”

  “That’s because she was a white blur of speed most of the time,” my mother said. “I recall her looks, though, because she fascinated me when I was a girl. Her eyes were the brightest green you
ever saw; they shone out at you. And her skin was so fair, you saw her blue veins. And she had blond hair just turning silver when I knew her; it must have been star-bright when she was a bit younger. But the main thing about her, the oddest thing—and everybody who knew her spoke of it—was that her hands never got coarse and rough and hard and red. All her life her hands were as soft and sweet as Spanish leather. Like ivory in color and smelling as delicate as the youngest lily.”

  “Trouble was,” my grandmother said, “she didn’t have a family. Her father died when she was real young and her mother not long after, and she had no brothers or sisters and so went to live with her mother’s sister and her husband. But Uncle Jake Miller was quite old by then and when he died it wasn’t long till Martha took to her grave. Charity begins at home, you know, but Angela didn’t have a home, so the gift of all her charitable feelings and helpful goodwill was bestowed upon the community.”

  “I thought you were going to say inflicted upon,” my mother interjected. “Because that was more the way it was. I don’t want you to think, Jess, that folks were ungrateful for all the things Angela did for them. They were extremely grateful. They felt beholden to her—and not just upon occasion but all the time. Suppose somebody was to come along while you were off at a family reunion or some other important do and weeded your garden. You’d think, Well, that was awful neighborly; I expect my friend would enjoy a mess of spinach. Then while you were on your way to her house with the greens, she was already back at yours, dusting the furniture and sweeping the floors. When you can’t pay favors back and they keep on piling up, it gets to be a ponderous burden.”

  “It might make you a little aggravated,” said my grandmother.

  “To tell the truth,” my mother said, “you get to where you dread to see your benefactress coming. You might even get to where you don’t really like her.”

  “You had to like Angela, though.”

  “Yes, it was duty. Because the only thing she would ever say about you or anybody else was, ‘I’m glad to call that lady my friend.’”

  “Which made you so ashamed of your vexatious thoughts, you’d hang your head and blush.”

  “I hope you comprehend what we’re saying, Jess,” my mother explained. “You do understand that Angela Newcome was a wonderful woman, don’t you? And I hope you can understand how she was also a sore trial. Maybe what I’m saying is against the Bible, but sometimes folks can come to believe there’s such a thing as too much charity.”

  “Remember the time Melissa Carter wrenched her back?” my grandmother asked. “Angela moved right into the house with the Carters and took the place of Melissa, keeping the house and washing the clothes and making the meals and tending the garden. Melissa was out of commission for six weeks and Angela took over her every duty.”

  “Took over a few too many,” my mother said. “Because there came a day Melissa heard some uncustomary sounds from the front room and crawled painfully out of bed and crept to the door and cracked it and beheld her husband and Angela with neither of them hardly a stitch on and just having a high old time on that red corduroy sofa.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call that charity,” my grandmother said.

  “But Angela Newcome would and did,” my mother replied. “She told Melissa that her husband, Alfred, seemed to be in such straits, him being deprived of home comfort for so long, it only seemed her bounden duty to try to ease his burden. And the thing is, Melissa believed her. She took Angela at her word, though she did bring a swift ending to such activity by saying it distressed her own feelings and she knew Angela would never wish to do that. But she accepted Angela’s every syllable when she explained how she considered the whole thing purely in the light of neighborliness and friendly aid. I’d like to see Joe Robert’s face if I got myself into such a pickle as that and offered Christian charity as my excuse.”

  “Now, daughter, you know you’d never cut such a shameless dido.”

  “No, of course not,” my mother proudly averred. “I’m just saying I’d like to see my spouse’s face, is all. I’d like to hear what he had to say.”

  “That would be one thing, anyhow, he wouldn’t pass off as a joke.”

  “Well, he might. You’d be surprised at the things Joe Robert finds funny that everybody else takes serious. What I’d really like to see is how he’d act if Angela Newcome was around and hatched a notion to help him. With all her clothes on, I mean—helping Joe Robert with his chores here and at his furniture store and with all the other new ventures he’s trying out.”

  “Angela did something like that one time,” my grandmother said. “I don’t know if you heard about her and William McPheeter or not.”

  “I never did,” my mother said.

  “McPheeter tumbled off his disk harrow and it rolled over him and mangled his legs so gruesome, they had to cut both of them off. They kept him in the hospital over in Braceboro for most of a year and he came back in a wheelchair. Angela Newcome moved right into his house, him being a bachelor and having no one else to do for him. No scandal ever attached to any of Angela’s comings and goings because everybody understood her nature, and in the case of McPheeter there couldn’t be any tickle-me. He was chopped up too bad for foolery. She did for that man everything there was to do and maybe saved his life and certainly his sanity, for the accident had turned him into the bitterest angry person you could imagine. Laid the blame for his condition on everything except himself—his team of blaze-face horses, the rocks in the field, the manufacture of his disk harrow that was only three years old. He didn’t blame himself, never mind the whiskey jug he kept tucked in the shade of a sassafras bush. I’m not saying that whiskey caused the accident, only that he left that part out when he scattered blame around.

  “His mind turned bitter, as I say, and he lost his religion. Became a black atheist and spoke such blasphemy, you might not be surprised to see brimstone smoke pour out of his mouth and ears. A king’s golden treasury wouldn’t induce me to repeat the things they say he said; lightning might reach down and render me to tallow. Some were amazed it didn’t strike him at least once or twice a day.

  “Nor was he soothed by Angela’s ministrations. He cursed her together with all the other elements of creation, even when she was caring for him in the most particular ways, helping him to use the bedpan and then emptying it and washing it. And bathing him and rubbing him down with alcohol. Not to mention fetching him whiskey anytime he had a thirst, and she no friend to the jug, far from it.

  “But all the time she was doing these things unpleasant to do, McPheeter was not thanking her nor showing gratitude in any little way. He was cussing her instead, up one side and down the other, without let or stop. Truth is, he would even lash out to hit now and again, though she never admitted to it. But folks would notice her bruised on occasion, and while she never admitted, she never denied, either.

  “My wellspring of charity would have run dry the first week in that house,” my grandmother continued, “and while Angela Newcome’s supply seemed boundless, it surely must have ebbed a little. But on she kept, living there week after month after year, not complaining, not sassing back, hardly ever resting. She had to do most all the other business, too, shopping and banking and watching after the insurance checks McPheeter received, these being the most cash money he’d seen or hoped to see in his whole life. Enough to keep him in bonded whiskey, except he only drank moon, and plenty to pay Angela a just wage for her services, though she would take but what was required to keep herself fed and decently clothed.

  “It was a case of finding out which was most powerful, the red rage and fury of the maimed William McPheeter or the patient sweetness and watchful care of Angela Newcome. Fire and water, that was. There will never be but one fire an ocean can’t put out, and I don’t think it’s coming in my lifetime. Angela was an ocean of charity and little by little she dampened the conflagration that was McPheeter’s soul. She did it without thinking to, only going on with her duties, fetchin
g and toting for the lame man and looking to his every need.

  “Three years she stayed with him, so it was slow progress, but by and by McPheeter’s feelings softened and his temper sweetened and a little ray of sunlight peeked into his dark despair. But Angela’s attentions did not slacken; in fact, a whisper of gratitude only made her minister to her charge more thoroughly and more cheerfully until … Well, you can guess what happened.”

  “Yes, but tell Jess about it,” my mother said.

  “McPheeter changed, after all. Took up his Bible to read just a verse or two every day and softened his ugly behavior toward Angela and began to be a calmer and gentler man. Angela encouraged this new heartening in him, but without saying anything, simply going on as she had done before, laboring in his service. Some might call it slaving, but such a thought was never hers. McPheeter kept sweetening up, requesting Preacher Hardy in once a month and sometimes twice and they would hold little prayer services in the front room or out on the porch if the weather was fine. Angela sat through these with damp eyes and a shining face and splendor in her heart. These would have been the proudest times in her life, not that she took any credit for the change in McPheeter.

  “So, to make a long story a little shorter, McPheeter had transformed for the better and began to feel a great debit of gratitude. He thought back on the earlier times, how hard and sour and mean he had been to Angela, and he tried to think in what ways he could make it up to her, but he couldn’t conceive of a single course of action. What he had changed into, though he couldn’t know it, was a person like everybody else in Blue Creek, a body so heavily obliged to Angela that he was miserable. Every time she laid a meal on the table, every time she cut his hair and gave him a scrub bath, every night when she turned down his bed and helped him lift over into it, he felt like the lowest of the low. Fouler than a hog-pen rat.

  “There was no way he could take back the things he had said and done to her. God would forgive him for the blasphemies and curses he had cried out in his pain and anguish. He had Preacher Hardy’s word on that. But Angela wouldn’t forgive him because she didn’t think there was anything to forgive. It had been his fearsome wounds that spoke, she reckoned, and not William McPheeter. So he couldn’t ease his soul with clean confession. And anytime he saw her, he felt worse, and he saw her all the time, almost every daylight hour.