Farewell, I'm Bound to Leave You Page 7

  “For you should understand, Jess, that it takes forethought and practice and strength of character to make silence mean something. All these Selena possessed and no one ever felt mocked or put-upon or injured or ill-used because she wouldn’t speak to them. It was a way she had of making folks accept her the way she was. And more than that, too: She got them to respect her silence without knowing the cause of it, and it’s the rarest man or woman who could do that.

  “She was alone in the world but pretty well set up. Her mother had died of consumption not long after Selena was born and the grief of loss bowed her father plumb into the earth. He pined and dwindled and finally died of something they couldn’t name. Her grandfolks on her daddy’s side took care of her till she turned eighteen, and she couldn’t have learned much habit of speech from them. In Grammer Mellon’s gloomy stone two-story house I expect you wouldn’t hear six words spoken from Sunday to Sunday. And the Lord’s day they would keep in complete silence.

  “Try to picture her in that dark old house. Grammer and his wife, Tennie, had lived so long together, they looked alike. He had a greenish face; she had a greenish face—like they had mildewed from being long out of the light of the sun. They both had balded in the back, showing splotchy heads. And they both had the same tight little crack of a mouth. There was something wrong in the head with both of them and they looked at Selena like spies peeping from shadows. Nobody ever much cared for either of them.… Well, you can see how Selena came by her strength to be alone.

  “I mean, to be herself all the time, to be Selena when she was alone and to be Selena still when others were nigh. That’s another uncommon thing. You’d be surprised how much we change in the company of others, how we stand different and talk different and think of ourself in a different way. She didn’t.

  “A woman like that is bound to have a marked effect. Selena impressed every person variously. One feller would be struck lovesick after a bare minute of her acquaintance, while another man—just as readily disposed toward the tender passions as the first one—would begin to ponder upon the notion of celibacy. A swarthy outdoorsman might suddenly think of the peaceful advantages of the studious life, while the bookish scholar might dream of dwelling in some lonely fastness with only the tall pines and the stately moon and his rifle for companionship. The straitlaced preacher would remember the pleasures of youth and the red-eyed reprobate would recall the empty broken promises he had made to his departed mother. It wasn’t that she searched your soul with those silver-glancing eyes; you did that yourself—only her gaze had prompted you to it.

  “Upon the passing of her grandparents, all the Mellon property came to her. That was four hundred fat acres down by Buie’s Bend with that big stone house and three spacious barns and I don’t know what-all livestock and equipment. She lived in the house and managed to lease out the farming, and her income from that was more than sufficient to tide her into her gray years. She kept the house herself—spotless, too, according to those few who saw it. That would be Lawyer Jenkins, who handled the bulk of her affairs, and Bob Brendan, the Republican banker that she trusted when nobody else would, and Hiram Belcher, who leased the land from her and made the both of them a pretty penny on the arrangement. She went out to parties and socials and weddings and funerals and church dos when invited and seemed to have a pleasant time. People had got used to her and they thought they could read her moods pretty well—though they have been dead wrong sometimes about that.

  “Not that people wouldn’t try to fuss her now and again, try to tease her into breaking her silence by saying something cheeky to her. Not straight to her face, of course, because when she turned her eyes on them, they couldn’t do it. But sigogglin, looking away toward the window or toward some other person to say something smart-mouthed or even a little rude sometimes. One time when your uncle Harold Roark was stationed at Alexandria, Virginia, he told how people were always making faces at him when he guarded the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They’d say impertinent remarks, trying to cause him to forget his discipline.

  “That was the way people tried to get at Selena, hoping to crack her rule of silence. But they only did it once, because when they gained her attention and she looked their way, they changed their mind about many things and especially about deviling her again ever.”

  * * *

  “But there was one exception—seems like there’s always one person who won’t fit the pattern. This time, it was Lexie Courland. She was a handful, Lexie was, a double handful, with a lot of spillover. She was a tall, loud woman in her flaming forties, with wild red hair and as full of mischief as schoolchildren on Halloween. No respect for beast or human, man, woman, or child. Raucous and free-talking.

  “Now your aunt Samantha is a free-talking woman and picked up the habit on purpose to kind of protect herself in the business she’s in. Yet anybody can tell just by listening that Aunt Sam is harmless with her words, thoughtless, in fact. But the coarse words that Lexie Courland uttered were meant to be coarse and not matter-of-fact. She wanted you to hear coarseness.”

  “Why?” I asked my grandmother.

  “Well, she’d been widowed twice and separated and I guess finally divorced at least once. Those circumstances are bound to work damage on a woman’s spirit. But probably it was just her character to be the way she was, from the beginning and always. She liked fuss and trouble; she liked to rake up the coals just to see the sparks fly.

  “One thing I must say in her favor—she was no hypocrite. She let you know she supped her whiskey straight, would paint the town from dark till sunrise, and was ready for any man. Straight-out about it. ‘I don’t mind who the menfolk are or who they’re hitched to,’ she said. It’s the wife’s duty to hold on to her man. Happens he comes my way and I like the looks of him and the jingle of his purse, I’m after him like a chicken hawk on a hatchling. The women that don’t want their men stuck in my flypaper had better warn ’em stern and treat ’em sweet. For I’ll snatch at any old corn pone that crosses my path.’

  “She didn’t say corn pone and I won’t say what she did say.

  “You can’t speak plainer than that, seems to me. Of course, it was a conflagration scandal all over the township. One after another, no less than five preachers came to call on her, carrying their Bibles in their strong right hands. They knocked and she opened to them and shut the door behind. When it opened again, out came the preachers white-faced and trembling and clutching onto the Good Book like it was a failing handhold on the side of a high and rocky cliff. They shook their heads and sucked for breath. Two or three delegations of women made visits, too, but the result was different. When the women came away, they had switched to Lexie’s side.…

  “Well, they weren’t exactly on her side. They were not conferring upon her any man-hunting license. But they were satisfied that she was just what she said she was: a scandal to behold and not the least concerned who did the beholding. They figured they could live with the danger of Lexie Courland. Any man with plain good sense ought to see that she had detour signs written all over her: Warning—Rough Road Ahead.

  “Men being what they are, a few of them fell into her clutches anyhow. She kept her promise of being a good-time girl, but her kind of time was too good. They couldn’t keep up. Soon enough they were panting in her dust, like a dog chasing a car on an August afternoon. She’d run them ragged, then send them home, where their wives would snatch them bald-headed.

  “Wouldn’t you hate to be some old buzzard that had to drag home shamefaced to his wife after a rowdy time with Lexie Courland? You’d feel as low and gloomy as a red worm. I hope you’ll remember that, Jess, in your days to come.

  “So when Lexie met Selena Mellon the first time at a social that was given for Morissa Cannon when she was a bride-to-be, she behaved just like those irreverent creatures at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. She tried with all her might to discompose Selena because she’d heard all about her and was overcome with raging jealousy.

 
“Or maybe it wasn’t jealousy. Now that I’ve said that, I wonder if really it might have been nothing more than an irresistible impulse to upset everybody’s settled notions about Selena. That’s more in line with her true character—just to be raking up the coals.

  “So at the party, she arranged to stand well within Selena’s earshot and said, ‘I hear there’s somebody at this party who thinks she’s too good to talk to the rest of us. Who could that stuck-up person be, I wonder?’ She didn’t look at Selena; she was standing sideways to her and gazing off at the far corner of the room.

  “When she said that, the other women there drew away from Selena and Lexie, leaving them a space all by themselves in front of the hearth. They understood that Lexie had chosen to confront Selena and they wanted no part of it. They truly didn’t want it to happen, but they knew better than to cross Lexie. She was not above hair pulling, that one.

  “For, you see, Selena’s strange silence and her modest reserve and her calming influence had come to be important. Though Selena was not a part of the tight circle of these women, still she was one of them, only with a soul more pure and noble than any of them possessed, her spirit large and her mind clear of every least fear or shadow.

  “That’s the way they thought about her, right or wrong, and Lexie knew what they thought and that was why she was causing such a spectacle.

  “Selena, of course, did not reply to Lexie’s rude remark. She did turn to look at her, but Lexie wouldn’t respond to her gaze, only staring off at the far wall. Then she struck again: ‘Or maybe this certain someone don’t say anything because there’s nothing in her head except empty air.’ She let little time pass before she made another trial: ‘Or maybe it’s pure laziness. I’ve heard of lazy, but somebody being too lazy to talk—that’s a new one on me.’

  “Well, she could hurl these taunts into the distant corners all she wanted to. Everybody knew that Selena wouldn’t respond and that the true test of strength would come when Lexie turned about to face her and they locked eye beams. Lexie knew it, too, and so put off the moment as long as she could, standing there with her hands on her hips and saying vain, ugly things in the direction of the ceiling. Finally, though, the time had come to look her destiny in the face. Still with her fists dug into her hips, she wheeled slowly on her heels and looked at Selena square.

  “Concerning this awful moment, everybody gave a different account. Some say that for once Selena’s expression did change, and with surprising quickness; she looked upon Lexie with such a melting compassion it would stop the heart of a slow-thoughted ox. Others say no such thing, that Selena gave her a glance of such cold contempt that it would freeze the water in a steaming teakettle. And there were those who read anger in her face and others who read curious friendliness. And there were some who said her expression never changed at all, that it was as calm and placid as the moon, just like always.

  “Lexie’s face was easier to read, all her feelings being outsized anyway. First a sudden fury overcame her; her face went red and her eyes got wild and she dropped her fists to her sides and began clenching and unclenching them. It was like a campfire that has burnt down to embers and then somebody throws on them a dollop of kerosene and they flame up head-high but then die down again as quick because there’s no fuel to feed on. So it was with Lexie; her red rage drained out of her almost as fast as it had flared and left her feeling I couldn’t say how. Shaken, I’d think, all-over trembled, down to her foot soles. Like everybody else that Selena took notice of, Lexie understood that she was known, her body and spirit understood for the first time in her life, seen through as simply as you and I see through this window we’re looking out of now at the storm building up.

  “Then as soon as the anger passed out of her, Lexie filled up with sorrow. She dropped to her knees in front of Selena and bowed her wild red head. She started sobbing, too, quietly at first and then in that full-throated way you see sometimes at funerals or maybe when a child has lost her favorite dolly. The weeping went on quite a while.

  “Nobody knew how to act. At first the women pretended not to notice and tried to converse among themselves like this strange occurrence was not taking place in front of them. But that was a pretense impossible to keep up and they soon fell silent and gathered in a circle around that pair of women to see what would happen next.

  “Selena looked down at the weeping Lexie and made no motion for what seemed the longest space. Then she bent down and grasped her upper arms and pulled her to her feet. She hugged Lexie and patted her on the back, the way you’ve seen comforters do a thousand times. After Lexie quietened, Selena stepped by Lexie’s side and took her right arm in her left and they went out of the room together. In the foyer they paused to gather their light wraps, then joined arms again and left the house and went down the walk to where Selena’s rig was tethered to the picket fence. She helped Lexie up into that trim little buggy and climbed in herself and took the reins and off they drove.

  “The others watched from window and doorway and they all declared that the hooves of Selena’s bay mare made no sound on the dusty gravel road, that they struck the hardpan as light as thistledown and the two women drifted out of sight as noiseless as a dream overtaking a parson’s sleep.

  “They drove straight to Selena’s big stone house and nothing was seen of either of them for at least a good five weeks.

  “What they did, Jess, was set up a life together. In that one glance of Selena’s, Lexie Courland found what she had been looking for with all her unbridled behavior. She had discovered her true friend, her soul mate, and it flooded her mind with strong amazement to understand that she had a chance to be happy and leave off toying with those puny-spirited men that were but as chaff in the wind.”

  * * *

  “And this pair of women lived together in peace and contentment till the end of their lives. To the end of Selena’s, I mean. She died first. There was never any anger or bitterness between them and, as far as anybody was able to tell, not even passing irritation. It was an arrangement that must have been made in heaven—that’s what I say. We all know for a fact that not one hard word ever passed between them.

  “Because Selena did not break her silence. After the pair was joined, people all said, ‘Well, now Selena will begin to talk and she’s going to be the noisiest chatterbox that ever donned a petticoat.’ But they were wrong on that score, just as they had been wrong about so many things.

  “When they went out in society together, Selena never spoke and Lexie only rarely. She had absorbed a lot of Selena’s character. She quietened considerable and stopped her ugly, rude comments about people to their face and behind their back. She dressed different, more ladylike and becoming, and of course showed no sign of interest in any menfolk. She washed the henna out of her hair. I won’t say she sweetened; there was too much gall in her nature for that. But she kept her sword in the sheath, so to speak.

  “She did take it upon herself to became a kind of interpreter, telling folks a little of what was in Selena’s mind. When a foodstuff of one sort or another was offered at table, she might overpass her friend, saying, ‘Selena doesn’t care for creecy greens.’ Or when some social gathering was proposed for a future date, she might declare, ‘Selena believes that we’ll be busy with housework in the afternoon but would be glad to show up along about sundown.’ Things like that, but nothing about her friend’s deep feelings or broader opinions. In fact, she was much less free with her own notions now, not having to let everybody know at the top of her voice what she felt and thought about every little thing that took place.

  “Yet she was frank and open when questioned—up to a certain point. I don’t expect she would’ve answered questions too warmly personal, but she was willing to satisfy a reasonably polite curiosity.

  “What was it like living in a house with someone who never spoke? She vowed it was the most graceful existence a person could envision.

  “How did she know when Selena needed assistance or had s
ome minor want? She said that it didn’t take long to pick up slight signals and that if anybody else would observe her friend attentively, they, too, would decipher them.

  “Did she and Selena perfectly agree in every point about religion and politics and such topics? She replied that they did not agree on every detail but that these matters rarely came up. When you lived in silence for a good while, you learned not to bother much with trivial matters.

  “But surely the Lord and His works were not trivial? No, but talking about the topic was pointless unless you had something better to add than what the Bible said or Preacher Hardy could explain.

  “Well then, what was there that had importance? What matters loomed large enough to occupy their communion with each other? Quietness, she explained. Silence. Silence itself had a deep mystery in it. Many mysteries, in fact. And these she and Selena explored together, sitting side by side in their chairs, never exchanging a word.

  “Nobody understood what Lexie was talking about. But they were mightily impressed with her saying the things she said, uttering such solemn words on such grave matters. Your father likes to talk about the ancient teachers and philosophers; Joe Robert will go on about Socrates more than a smidgin. Yet I have thought, Jess, that Lexie Courland turned into a deep-thinking woman just by being near Selena Mellon all the time. I don’t expect your daddy would agree with me. He would ask where her learned tomes were to be found and her big ideas. She changed into a different person, is all I know. One day she was a heedless, rip-raring thing as impulsive as a young bull and then in a short time with Selena she became longheaded and seriously inclined. Living with Selena was a course of training for her, and I’ve met more than a few others I would desire to be educated by the same method.

  “They lived together for many a year, more than thirty all told, I believe. Then, like I said, Selena died first, and it was no easy going. She got the cancer and it began to eat up her insides, and the torture of it is something I can’t imagine or bear to try. It didn’t break her spirit until the very end, and I’m not sure about then. She still never spoke except that one first and last time, but she moaned a moan that would climb into a keening wail and then trail off into sobbing. Lexie sat by her every minute, her heart wringing inside her like a rope twisting around a well crank. She reported that Selena did speak—once only, as I said before. The pain had let up a little in the last day and a half, but when Dr. Anderson looked at her, he shook his head and foretold she only had hours. Lexie said—and I’ve always believed it the truth, Jess—that in the last peaceful time before the end Selena murmured to her. ‘Goodbye, my dove,’ she said.