Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories Part 8

"Comes back next morning, nice fat duck under his arm."

It looks as if there has been a very significant shrinkage. What we hoped for of course but frankly we did not expect it. And I do not mean that the battle is over, just that this is a favorable sign.

"Dad don't know what to say. Just don't know what to say about it.

"Next night, very next night, sees his son goin' out the door with big bunch of branches in his hand."

Quite a favorable sign. We do not know that there may not be more trouble in the future but we can say we are cautiously optimistic.

"What's them branches you got in your hand?

"Them's p.u.s.s.y willows.

"Okay, Dad says. You just hang on a minute.

"You just hang on a minute, I'm gettin' my hat. I'm gettin'

my hat and I'm comin' with you!"

"It's too much," Jinny said out loud.

Talking in her head to the doctor.

"What?" said Matt. An aggrieved and babyish look had come over his face while he was still chuckling. "What's the matter now?"

Jinny was shaking her head, squeezing her hand over her mouth.

"It was just a joke," he said. "I never meant to offend you."

Jinny said, "No, no. I-No."

"Never mind, I'm goin' in. I'm not goin' to take up no more of your time." And he turned his back on her, not even bothering to call to the dogs.

She had not said anything like that to the doctor. Why should she? Nothing was his fault. But it was true. It was too much.

What he had said made everything harder. It made her have to go back and start this year all over again. It removed a certain - 75*

low-grade freedom. A dull, protecting membrane that she had not even known was there had been pulled away and left her raw.

Matt's thinking she had gone into the cornfield to pee had made her realize that she actually wanted to. She got out of the van, stood cautiously, and spread her legs and lifted her wide cotton skirt. She had taken to wearing big skirts and no panties this summer because her bladder was no longer under perfect control.

A dark stream trickled away from her through the gravel.

The sun was down now, evening was coming on. A clear sky overhead, the clouds had vanished.

One of the dogs barked halfheartedly, to say that somebody was coming, but it was somebody they knew. They had not come over to bother her when she got out-they were used to her now. They went running out to meet whoever it was without any alarm or excitement.

It was a boy, or young man, riding a bicycle. He swerved towards the van and Jinny went round to meet him, a hand on the cooled-down but still-warm metal to support herself. When he spoke to her she did not want it to be across her puddle. And maybe to distract him from even looking on the ground for such a thing, she spoke first.

She said, "h.e.l.lo-are you delivering something?"

He laughed, springing off the bike and dropping it to the ground, all in one motion.

"I live here," he said. "I'm just getting home from work."

She thought that she should explain who she was, tell him how she came to be here and for how long. But all this was too difficult. Hanging on to the van like this, she must look like somebody who had just come out of a wreck.

"Yeah, I live here," he said. "But I work in a restaurant in town. I work at Sammy's."

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A waiter. The bright white shirt and black pants were waiter's clothes. And he had a waiter's air of patience and alertness.

"I'm Jinny Lockyer," she said. "Helen. Helen is-"

"Okay, I know," he said. "You're who Helen's going to work for. Where 's Helen?"

"In the house."

"Didn't n.o.body ask you in, then?"

He was about Helen's age, she thought. Seventeen or eighteen. Slim and graceful and c.o.c.ky, with an ingenuous enthusiasm that would probably not get him as far as he hoped.

She had seen a few like that who ended up as Young Offenders.

He seemed to understand things, though. He seemed to understand that she was exhausted and in some kind of muddle.

"June in there too?" he said. "June 's my mom."

His hair was colored like June 's, gold streaks over dark. He wore it rather long, and parted in the middle, flopping off to either side.

"Matt too?" he said.

"And my husband. Yes."

"That's a shame."

"Oh, no," she said. "They asked me. I said I'd rather wait out here."

Neal used sometimes to bring home a couple of his Yo-yos, to be supervised doing lawn work or painting or basic carpentry.

He thought it was good for them, to be accepted into somebody's home. Jinny had flirted with them occasionally, in a way that she could never be blamed for. Just a gentle tone, a way of making them aware of her soft skirts and her scent of apple soap. That wasn't why Neal had stopped bringing them. He had been told it was out of order.

"So how long have you been waiting?"

"I don't know," Jinny said. "I don't wear a watch."

"Is that right?" he said. "I don't either. I don't hardly ever meet another person that doesn't wear a watch. Did you never wear one?

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She said, "No. Never."

"Me neither. Never ever. I just never wanted to. I don't know why. Never ever wanted to. Like, I always just seemed to know what time it was anyway. Within a couple minutes. Five minutes the most. And I know where all the clocks are, too. I'm riding in to work, and I think I'll check, you know, just be sure what time it is really. And I know the first place I can see the courthouse clock in between the buildings. Always not more than three/four minutes out. Sometimes one of the diners asks me, do you know the time, and I just tell them. They don't even notice I'm not wearing a watch. I go and check as soon as I can, clock in the kitchen. But I never once had to go in there and tell them any different."

"I've been able to do that too, once in a while," Jinny said. "I guess you do develop a sense, if you never wear a watch."

"Yeah, you really do."

"So what time do you think it is now?"

He laughed. He looked at the sky.

"Getting close to eight. Six/seven minutes to eight? I got an advantage, though. I know when I got off of work and then I went to get some cigarettes at the 7-Eleven and then I talked to some guys a couple of minutes and then I hiked home. You don't live in town, do you?"

Jinny said no.

"So where do you live?"

She told him.

"You getting tired? You want to go home? You want me to go in and tell your husband you want to go home?"

"No. Don't do that," she said.

"Okay. Okay. I won't. June 's probably telling their fortunes in there anyway. She can read hands."

"Can she?"

"Sure. She goes in the restaurant a couple of times a week.

Tea too. Tea leaves."

- 78*

He picked up his bike and wheeled it out of the way of the van. Then he looked in through the driver's window.

"Left the keys in," he said. "So-you want me to drive you home or what? I can put my bike in the back. Your husband can get Matt to drive him and Helen when they get ready. Or if it don't look like Matt can, June can. June 's my mom but Matt's not my dad. You don't drive, do you?"

"No," said Jinny. She had not driven for months.

"No. I didn't think so. Okay then? You want me to? Okay?"

"This is just a road I know. It'll get you there as soon as the highway."

They had not driven past the subdivision. In fact they had headed the other way, taking a road that seemed to circle the gravel pit. At least they were going west now, towards the brightest part of the sky. Ricky-that was what he 'd told her his name was-had not yet turned the car lights on.

"No danger meeting anybody," he said. "I don't think I ever met a single car on this road, ever. See-not so many people even know this road is here."

"And if I was to turn the lights on," he said, "then the sky would go dark and everything would go dark and you wouldn't be able to see where you were. We just give it a little while more, then when it gets we can see the stars, that's when we turn the lights on."

The sky was like very faintly colored red or yellow or green or blue gla.s.s, depending on which part of it you looked at.

"That okay with you?"

"Yes," said Jinny.

The bushes and trees would turn black, once the lights were on. There would just be black clumps along the road and the black ma.s.s of trees crowding in behind them, instead of, as now, the individual still identifiable spruce and cedar and feathery tamarack and the jewelweed with its flowers like winking bits of - 79*

fire. It seemed close enough to touch, and they were going slowly. She put her hand out.

Not quite. But close. The road seemed hardly wider than the car.

She thought she saw the gleam of a full ditch ahead.

"Is there water down there?" she said.

"Down there?" said Ricky. "Down there and everywhere.

There 's water to both sides of us and lots of places water underneath us. Want to see?"

He slowed the van. He stopped. "Look down your side," he said. "Open the door and look down."

When she did that she saw that they were on a bridge. A little bridge no more than ten feet long, of crossway-laid planks. No railings. And motionless water underneath it.

"Bridges all along here," he said. "And where it's not bridges it's culverts. 'Cause it's always flowing back and forth under the road. Or just laying there and not flowing anyplace."

"How deep?" she said.

"Not deep. Not this time of year. Not till we get to the big pond-it's deeper. And then in spring it's all over the road, you can't drive here, it's deep then. This road goes flat for miles and miles, and it goes straight from one end to the other. There isn't even any roads that cuts across it. This is the only road I know of through the Borneo Swamp."

"Borneo Swamp?" Jinny repeated.

"That's what it's supposed to be called."

"There is an island called Borneo," she said. "It's halfway round the world."

"I don't know about that. All I ever heard of was just the Borneo Swamp."

There was a strip of dark gra.s.s now, growing down the middle of the road.

"Time for the lights," he said. He switched them on and they were in a tunnel in the sudden night.

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"Once I did that," he said. "I turned the lights on like that and there was this porcupine. It was just sitting there in the middle of the road. It was sitting straight up kind of on its hind legs and looking right at me. Like some little old man. It was scared to death and it couldn't move. I could see its little old teeth chattering."

She thought, This is where he brings his girls.