Roxanna Slade Part 10

truckloads of ice from an ice plant miles away and kept the old gentleman chilled in the smokehouse until we were back for the actual funeral. I accepted those reasons, though I knew full well it would mean us coming back in a week and settling in at the Slade place for days if not much longer.

But in the meanwhile we had our week in the nation's capital which neither one of us had seen till then. Again we traveled on the handsome gift the major had given us, and we stayed at the first-rate Willard Hotel which had slept the likes of Abraham Lincoln years before--not that Major would have liked that distinction. Among the small-town girls of my time, I was not so peculiar in never having stayed in a public hotel. And I'd had no experience of cities bigger than Raleigh and Richmond. Here so many years later, it may sound hopelessly countrified; but I can't help saying that, as long ago as 1921 with just a week's exposure to what was after all no giant metropolis, my young mind predicted the present fate of our pitiful country.

Understand first that I had a grand time every day of that week, as good a time as any week since. But in the midst of all the new pleasures, I did learn one thing most people still seem not to know. The human heart was, and is, not built to live in crowded quarters with more than one or two other people unrelated by blood. Ganging strangers together in cities like termites hiving or stacked like logs is asking for just what we have in the whole world today give or take the odd prairie--runaway madness, murder, rape, hatred, unthinkable cruelty to children and hundreds of thousands of souls who wind up sleeping unshielded the whole year round in the snow and rain.

I have few illusions about family life, and I'm no big defender of the deep rural world as a better form of perfection either. But I know another thing that follows from the first--thick swarms of people will one way or other be the cause of whatever end the human race undergoes. So those two certainties came from our honeymoon, not that I've offered sermons about them down through the decades--not that they proved useful knowledge at all. What are people in cities to do--all die? In any case that entire week was an odd and I'll have

to say thrilling experience for me--being watched by an endless supply of strangers in the hallways and lobby of a fine hotel and then being locked entirely alone with Palmer Slade in a room that had no memories of anyone we'd known.

It was still a time when women--and honest men for that matter--didn't grow up on a daily diet of movies, books, TV stories and whispered rumors of romance or raw love. They can't sell toothpaste on TV today without the bald a.s.surance that your s.e.x life and chances for wealth will improve dramatically with regular use of the featured brand. The mostly pitiful silent movies and books in mine and Leela's girlhood could have left you believing that men were driven occasionally to clutch Mary Pickford closely to their heaving chests which produced sudden fainting in Mary and emergency treatment to stand her back on her feet in time for the sure-to-follow delivery of a baby and an ensuing lifetime of diapers and endless sieges of cooking.

Despite growing up in a world like that--the world of "well-brought-up" white Southern girls-- I've mentioned being raised in a house with brothers on hand not to mention a father. So I was not exactly a moron on the question of the princ.i.p.al facts about men. Yet still, alone in a distant town in a big hotel with a man I knew very little about when it came to details of his heart and mind, I asked myself many times each day whether this was where I was meant to be and whether I'd set the course of my life on the right road to follow for fifty-odd years.

Strangely I'd really not asked such questions till now. And except for short prayers, I knew no way to answer myself but to watch the boy I'd chosen till death did us part and see if I could imagine who he'd turn into as time rolled past us. Could my own twists and turns match his? Could I feed his hunger? Could he stand and lift me through any more plunges that I might take into hopelessness?

In between long visits to the Capitol building, the national zoo, the old Smithsonian and the White House itself, I observed the following traits in Palmer. He was wide awake the instant his eyes broke open in the morning, no slowed-down vagueness. The high rate of burn in

all his doings required that he eat a good breakfast no more than half an hour after rising from bed, that all our meals be precisely on time and that--if he'd engaged in strenuous work of any sort--he must eat a small portion of something sweet; or he'd suffer a headache that might last for days.

Considering the frequent exertions he was driven to make on my body that honeymoon week and for months thereafter, he ate a good many slices of pie and squares of fudge to spare himself pain. From then on, at all hours, I took silent care to have some good sweet available to him. And to be honest here, I never felt burdened by what Palmer required of me that early in our life. I continued relishing the sense of helping him win some ease. Truth to tell I gained my own ease from him more often than I had the grace to mention and I regret that stingy withholding of a fact that might have pleased him.

Palmer didn't want me or anybody else to ask him more than one or two sizable questions a day, questions that called for serious thinking on long-range decisions. And if he didn't answer you for whole days to come, sometimes for weeks, you were well advised not to ask again. He hadn't forgot you, he was taking his time, you'd get your reply from the depths of his soul when he knew what it was. Palmer dreaded making an error of judgment more than any other human I've known. And he made very few in the years I knew him, though he suffered for some and made others suffer--a relative few as far as the husbands I've known are concerned.

The public things he loved were harmless. I've alluded to his infinite walks in the woods, his willingness to watch some natural process as slow as a glacier walking down a mountain and learn pleasure from it. He loved every animal he ever encountered, even the creatures most people dread such as snakes and grinning pink-eyed possums, screaming hawks and stinking red-necked buzzards full of filth. He loved black people's voices and words, the eloquent meanings they made out of lives as low to the ground as a highland turtle's, though of course he was capable of tearing the throat out of any shirker as I'll have to relate here later on.

He'd trust any Negro man or woman on sight, and for him that was not at all true of

white people. Furthermore he said he was never deceived. No black person ever let him down badly with money or honor. And while our children were young and growing, still open to life, Palmer could sit on the porch in the evening and watch every move they made in the yard--running for lightning bugs or playing dark tag--as though each step were as splendid with promise as the solemn orbits of the farthest stars or the nighttime movements of unwatched flowers.

And he worshiped my body at the very least for a good bit longer than any woman has the right to expect. I'll have to describe one time when he strayed, but I've mentioned that he told me before we ever joined that he was pure. And when he touched any other human in that final way, he never bore a trace of that act which even the keenest cat could have sensed and surely not me. I was born too far back and have lived too long to lay out any more secrets of his and my joined minds and bodies than are strictly needed for the story I'm telling. Enough to say that Palmer Slade gave every sign but actual words that my bare body could serve for him as an adequate site for whatever private needs compelled him. And he almost never left me feeling merely used like an object or a rented hand. In far the larger share of the times we joined our flesh over thirty-three years, I knew I was honored and cherished in silence by the man there above me who was Palmer--no question.

Of course n.o.body back home had a telephone, not till the midst of World War II. So we couldn't call Miss Olivia or my parents from Washington. We could have sent telegrams, and they could have answered. But with no prior plans, we kept our peace and they kept theirs. We knew they'd beckon if the need arose. In fact I can't recall that Palmer ever mentioned his father's name or spoke of his death in the whole week away, not till the last day--I know I didn't. I was gliding along for most of that time on what I realized was wafer-thin ice.

Yet the gliding itself kept me more excited deep in my soul than I'd ever been. By the time we stepped off the train in Washington, I'd convinced myself I had chosen right or that G.o.d had chosen for me. I believed I'd been set down in a groove like a needle on a brand-new gramophone record and would play happy music

--contented music anyhow--the rest of my life. And I feared that any sight or mention of what we'd left would send me crashing through ice into deeps I might not survive.

Then on our final afternoon when we'd eaten our midday meal and paused in the room for Palmer to take his pleasure again and a short nap afterward, he woke up and asked if I'd like to go with him to a "really sad place."

I didn't even ask what place he meant but told him Yes.

He said "Then we'll walk out to Arlington cemetery and pay our respects to Major Slade's memory."

I said I thought Arlington was a Yankee cemetery.

And Palmer laughed, laughed long and free, for the first time in days. He said I was right but that Arlington House at the top of the hill above the graves had been General Lee's home before the war. The Yankees had confiscated it from him when he chose the Rebel side and rode off south.

That seemed good enough credentials for Palmer. So I was dressed and ready shortly, though part of my mind was dragging back strongly against the whole idea of ending our week in a flock of dead soldiers to honor somebody who was now far gone and was anyhow the relic of a time I'd always secretly despised as I mentioned. Odd as I was for my day and age, I'd always known that fight was lunatic, though I kept my mouth shut. Imagine a war, costing six hundred thousand lives in four hot years, over no cause saner than whether or not white people could buy black people like cars and work them for the rest of their lives in no better conditions than a white-tailed deer might hope to find in the Carolina woods far into hard winter.

Near the hotel was a small florist's shop. Palmer turned us in there and bought a crimson rose--no request for advice, no coaching from me. And then in fall sunlight gorgeous enough to flatter the saddest sight on Earth, we walked across the river uphill toward the Lees' old mansion and all those acres of plain headstones.

We stayed and wandered through gra.s.s and graves till just before sunset. The graves that seemed to interest Palmer were not from the Civil War but the

ones from just recently, the many young men who'd died in France no more than a short three years ago. I was silently glad of their presence. It kept me from any disrespectful outburst about Union soldiers and the missing even crazier Rebels, many of whom were kin of mine. We were still moving slowly down rows of fresh stones when a guard walked up and informed us he'd be locking the gates in another few minutes.

Until that moment Palmer's deep red rose had stayed in his hand and hadn't wilted at all. As we walked downhill to the black iron gates, I said the first whole sentence I'd said since we came in sight of those huge columns on the house--one more thing General Lee lost and could never reclaim. I said "You're forgetting to leave your rose."

Palmer didn't break stride and didn't face me. He said "How could I forget anything that's covered with thorns?"

I said I thought he'd bought it to leave in memory of his father, maybe on the steps of the Lee house itself.

Palmer said "You don't think I've lived many seconds of this whole week without missing Major?"

I hadn't thought any such thing, no. And it pained me to hear it there at the end of a honeymoon that had seemed satisfactory to him and me. I said "Major lived a long full life," meaning of course that I didn't see any cause for long mourning in such a bloodless calm departure.

We were through the gates by then and almost at the edge of the river. Palmer stopped at last, looked down at me earnestly and finally said "I bought the rose for you to remember this day forever." He held it toward me.

A sick surprise bloomed up in my chest. As clear as the plunge of a needle through the hand, I knew what was coming and I couldn't take the rose.

Strangely Palmer knew what I felt.

The hand with the rose went back to his side. He walked me across the street to the river where he paused us on the bridge and waited till we'd watched the water for a minute. Then he flung the rose out downstream beyond us and said to me "You know we're going back to Mother's place, don't you?"

"I do, yes sir."

He almost smiled. "You got any questions?"

I said "For how long?"

"What if I said the rest of my life?"

I said "I'd stay with you. But against my will. Very much against my will."

"Didn't you surrender that the day we got married?" The hint of a smile had left his face. I'd never seen him more serious.

I said I'd probably surrendered everything. "But so did you. You took the same vows."

Palmer thought that over as a boat came toward us.

A tall young woman was standing in it, dressed in a handsome coal-black dress--neck to ankle. The boat had a little red-roofed cabin, but I couldn't see a soul crouched inside. The woman appeared to be alone on the broad Potomac and bound against the current. As she got just below us, she looked up suddenly, found my eyes and gave a slight wave. She got as close as twenty feet from me, no way to mistake her eyes meeting mine.

It flew through my mind that she had some big meaning that would dawn on me soon--Was she someway the rest of my life coming at me? Even at the moment that seemed too foolish, but I still waved back to her sadly.

And Palmer said "You know her, do you?" I shook my head No. No meaning had come. She was one more creature on her own private rounds.

After she'd gone on under the bridge and vanished from us upstream against the whole Potomac, Palmer said "She might well have been your other sister."

I'd noticed a likeness in hair and eyes but not much else--she was older than me by maybe five years. Still with her there on the river alone, I did feel close to her plight at the moment. No pity, no fear but the knowledge I was still in the world alone and bound upstream. Palmer had said she might have been my other sister. So I said "I don't have another sister except for Leela Dane." I could hear how childish that sounded, standing there. And I felt tears coming. So I turned my back to my young husband and took the first steps on toward the hotel.

I didn't hear Palmer's steps behind me. But when I'd gone a cold twenty yards, he said plainly "Roxanna Slade, look here."

He'd never said my whole new name before.

And G.o.d knows I hadn't said it over and over to myself as some girls did months before they were married. I stopped all the same and turned to face Palmer. I wasn't sure I even liked the sound. A Slade and a Dane were surely two different things. Maybe for me the new name was just a lie. But when I held my eyes on Palmer for a whole long instant, I liked his face. For that moment there it looked as nearly forlorn as it looked when he came ash.o.r.e for that first awful moment after Larkin went under in the swift Roanoke.

Palmer didn't speak again now, but he came on forward.

I held my place till he got right to me. Then I took the wide tough hand which was what he had to offer.

As mine was to him.

Our train tickets put us off at my home --the depot at least and Father's face there waiting for me with a new kind of transparent shield across his brow and eyes that no one but me would ever have noticed. I thought it was there to brace him at first against the sight of me as a woman and to hide from me what he felt about the loss. I'd have had to go back home in any case and pack sufficient sensible clothes for life however long at the Slade place.

I'd told n.o.body but Leela about my powerful hopes to live in Betsy Magee's rented rooms for a while. I'd let my parents make the normal a.s.sumption for those times--that, with Palmer being the sole man who could manage Major's tenants and timber and guard his mother on to her grave, we'd be living up by the river in the old house or somewhere in range of Miss Olivia's voice. So at least I didn't have to eat crow in public, though I did have to take steps to hide my disappointment when--after a quick two days in the only house I'd ever known well --I had to set off for one I dreaded.

I let Palmer know my continued feelings in a few silent ways. I sat quietly while Muddie ran on at supper the first night about her plans for getting the wedding presents packed and sent on to us wherever we'd be. Then I told her I'd let her know when we knew our permanent

whereabouts. And then on the morning when Ferny drove down to fetch us to the river, the last thing I said to Muddie--in Palmer's presence-- was how we were looking forward to Christmas with her and the family and to keep all our china and silver till then. We'd use it for the feast.

Palmer never flinched but smiled in his sly way and hugged everybody appropriately. And that helped me through the long cold ride and the moment when we broke out into sight of the Slade place and those same dogs tore out to meet us as if a hard year hadn't rolled by and Fern and I were condensing out of the bright day itself to pay a harmless midday visit to a pack of hounds.

Within an hour of our arrival when I was already helping in the kitchen with a big hot dinner, Palmer entered and stopped in the doorway. When Miss Olivia looked up, he said "Mother, Anna and I will be taking the Office for our private quarters. I'll move our things over there right now and bring any private stuff of yours back here to your bedroom."

He hadn't said so much as By your leave, and that cheered me up more than I'd expected. I turned to watch Miss Olivia's response.

She worked the better part of a minute as if she hadn't heard him.

Meanwhile Coy was grunting away like a cornered boar at the stove--"Uh-uh-un." Whether she meant she approved or disapproved wasn't clear, or maybe she thought the world would end in the next few seconds.

I'd heard her say more than once last year that we were living "in the Last Days." I had no evidence to prove she was wrong. It wouldn't have surprised me in so much silence if angel trumpets had sounded doom.

But by the time Miss Olivia paused in her task and looked toward the door, Palmer had already left on his purpose. I'll give her this much--she looked straight at me and burst out laughing. Then she said "I guess I'm learning my place in the new world."

I know I blushed like a hot fire truck. But I said "Palmer's got his own mind all right."

Miss Olivia said "I'm glad you noticed" and turned back to work. Her smile hung on for several more minutes like the sign of a

pact she was offering between us--We can handle this fool if we join hands against him.

But I gave her no sign I accepted the deal.

When she asked me to call the boys to table, I ran into Ferny in the front hall staring out the open door cold as it was.

Fern looked a little better than he had at the wedding. The shock of Major's death had faded, but he showed how much he'd aged in the year we'd all survived since Larkin's last day. He was drawn around the eyes and cheekbones. The skin was paper thin, and all the color in his lips was gone.

That lone sight of him pulled on me strongly. From behind I put a hand on his shoulder. "You got enough to do here, friend?"

Fern didn't look back. "What does that mean please?"

I said I only wondered if, with Major gone, time wasn't growing heavy on his hands.

Fern said "You want me to leave here today?" I told him that was the last thing I meant.

Then he turned to face me. And though there was a curious curl to his lips, a chilly smile, he said "In another few days you'll be glad I'm here."

It was my turn to say I was baffled now. Ferny looked out the door again. "I'm staying for you. You may need me."

I laughed a little but figured I shouldn't press him further. He'd always been p.r.o.ne to scaring people for no real reason. I told him Miss Olivia was ready to eat.