Benediction (20 page)

What happened?

He turned toward her. His face was bruised and swollen.

Oh no, she said. Now what?

A couple of men stopped me. One of them slapped me.

Why? What did you do?

It’s because of what I said in church.

How did they know that? Were they from the church?

No. But they didn’t need to be. Everybody would have heard.

You don’t have any idea who they were?

I’ve never seen them before.

What will you do?

I’m going to clean up my face, he said, then I’m coming to bed.

You won’t even inform the police?

No.

But why not?

Because this isn’t about the law. Or police protection.

She looked at his swollen face and the blood on his shirt. I don’t think I’m going
to last here much longer, she said. I’m going back to Denver. This is too much.

We can talk about it in the morning.

No. I’m done now. I can see that.

She turned and went back to bed. He looked at himself in the mirror and bent over
the sink and began laving cold water onto his cheeks again.

When he got into bed, she was still awake.

Are you all right? she said. Are you badly hurt?

No, not badly.

I never thought our lives would turn out this way, did you?

No, but you can go back to him and be comforted again. Is that your plan?

I don’t have a plan. Except to leave here. And find a job.

What about him?

Who? John Wesley?

Him too. But I meant your friend.

I haven’t seen him in over two years.

You haven’t talked to him?

When would I talk to him?

Anytime. Whenever I’m out of the house.

No. I told you I was finished. There’s nothing more to us.

But you’ll pick up if you go back.

I don’t have any interest in that. I’m too tired. I feel like somebody slapped me
too.

A
LITTLE WHILE
before noon on a day earlier in that same week, Lorraine went next door to Berta
May’s and then she and Alice came out and drove east on U.S. Highway 34, then south
on the gravel to the Johnson house.

When they turned in at the country house and got out of the car, the Johnson women
stepped outside and stood together on the back porch waiting for them. The two women
had on thin cotton sleeveless dresses and looked cool despite the noontime heat. Come
in, Willa called. Come in.

Here we are, Lorraine said.

How’s this sweet girl? Willa said when Alice came up on the porch.

Pretty good, Alice said.

Hello, sweetheart, Alene said.

They hugged her and hugged Lorraine. I brought this too, Lorraine said. She brandished
a bottle of wine.

They ate lunch in the yard on the north side of the house under an elm tree. They
carried the food out and set it on the old wood picnic table. Somebody needs to paint
that, Willa said. Look at it. The table was paint-flaked and dry.

We’ll just cover it up, Lorraine said.

They brought the food out in dishes covered with white dish towels, chicken salad
with fruit and country potato salad and dinner rolls. Alice carried out the plates,
the old thin delicate ones, hand-painted with blue grapes.

They’re too good for a picnic, Lorraine said.

No. I’m going to use them. What else are they for? My mother gave them to me for my
wedding a long time ago. I’m missing two of them.

They brought out glasses and silverware and salt and pepper shakers and a dish of
pickle relish and pink cloth napkins and iced tea in a glass pitcher. All was arranged
on the table. Alene and Willa sat on one side, taking their time getting seated, Willa
particularly, swinging her old bare legs over the wooden seat. Lorraine and Alice
sat on the opposite side.

Over them lay the shade of the tree, dappling and swaying when there was a breeze
at this noon hour.

Alice watched them, no one spoke nor began to eat yet. Then Willa said, I know we
can’t all think alike, but I want to say something that resembles grace.

They looked at her. She shut her eyes behind the thick glasses, and they closed their
eyes.

We’re grateful for this summer’s day. We’re grateful for this beautiful food. We want
to be thankful that we are here in this particular place on this particular day together.
We want to acknowledge these our many blessings. And we’re so thankful for this young
girl here with us. May she be filled with joy all her life. And may there be peace
in the world.

Then she ceased. They opened their eyes and looked at her. Amen, she said. Let’s eat.

They passed the dishes around. Alene had made the chicken salad with mandarin oranges
and olives and slivered almonds, and Lorraine said how good it was and Alene said
how good her potato salad was too and she said it was just potato salad but Alene
said it wasn’t.

Alice watched them talk, watching each speaker. The chicken salad was served on opened
lettuce leaves. She watched what they did. Lorraine cut hers as she ate and Alice
did the same.

The women drank some of the chilled wine and made a toast. The
tree shade moved, and there were birds calling from the lilac bushes and from the
trees below the house.

After a while Alice leaned over to whisper in Lorraine’s ear and Lorraine said, It’s
back through the kitchen, I think.

Is she wanting the bathroom? Willa said.

Yes.

Excuse me, Alice said.

She got up and went to the house. It was cool inside, the kitchen very clean and neat.
There were starched curtains at the windows. The little bathroom was off the kitchen,
it was clean and neat too, with a picture of a red flower framed on the wall. She
washed her hands and looked out the kitchen window into the yard, they were still
sitting at the picnic table. She looked through the doorway of the dining room, at
the wood table and matching chairs and matching buffet, and farther back was the living
room with the window shades drawn down for coolness.

When she went outside, Alene asked her, Are you okay, honey?

Yes.

Did you get enough to eat? Do you want some more iced tea?

Okay.

Lorraine said, I’m so satisfied and full. I could nap right here.

Well, we could, Willa said. We could just lie right down on the grass here in the
shade.

I’ll get some blankets, Mother.

Alene went in the house and came back with two old chenille bedspreads and laid them
out on the lawn.

What about the food? We don’t want it to spoil.

I’ll just put it in the refrigerator, Lorraine said. Alice can help me.

They lay out on the ground in the shade of the tree, with dinner napkins draped over
their faces, to ward off the flies. Alice shut her eyes. She could still see light
through the napkin. It was nice under the tree with the women.

We need a little music, Willa said.

Something soft and slow, Alene said. Piano or violin.

Then no one said anything for a while. Alice lifted the napkin from her face and looked
at them, the three women lying on the ground with the pink napkins over their faces.
Then she lay back and shut her eyes.

I wanted to play the piano, Willa said. I’ve told you this before, Alene.

Yes.

We were speaking of music. I wanted to play the piano and my mother bought lessons
for me when I was a little girl younger than Alice here. I walked once a week across
the field and paid a quarter per lesson. I walked half a mile across a plowed field
to the teacher. I could do the right hand but couldn’t seem to make the left hand
play in time, and after a month or two the teacher said to Mother, She doesn’t seem
to be making much progress. Doesn’t she practice? Mother said, I don’t believe she
does. Then Mother told me, Willa, you either have to practice or give up your lessons.
I went out to the barn and just cried. A quarter was a lot of money then, like a dollar
is now. Oh, more than a dollar, much more. So I told Mama I’d stop, I wouldn’t waste
any more money. I’ve criticized and rebuked myself a hundred times since. I do so
like music. I used to dance too.

I never heard you talk about the dancing, Mother.

Yes. I did tap dance with shiny shoes.

Then no one said any more. After a while Alice heard Willa begin to snore and then
the softer snoring of Alene and the breathing of Lorraine right beside her. She opened
her eyes once more under the cloth, the warm daylight was there, and she shut her
eyes.

When she woke she was surprised that she had been asleep. The women were sitting up,
not talking, only looking out toward the barn, waiting for her to wake. It was very
hot now in the afternoon, with only a little hot wind blowing.

We ought to go swimming, Lorraine said. I wish there was a creek out here.

I used to dunk my head in the stock tank on a hot day, Alene said.

The cattle are there now, Willa said.

They wouldn’t bother us.

It’s so dirty out there.

It’s not that bad.

We don’t have any bathing suits.

Oh damn the bathing suits, Mother.

They looked at each other and laughed.

All right then. But we do need towels.

I’ll get them.

And we can take out the lawn chairs, Willa said. I’m not sitting in the dirt. I don’t
care what you say.

The three women and the girl walked out to the barn carrying the towels and the lawn
chairs and the leftover wine and went in through the gate and crossed the hot empty
corral, going out into the pasture through the far gate, and walked along the path
worn by the cattle alongside the fence and stopped at the stock tank. There was a
pad of concrete laid around it, with dirt and manure below it and mud on the low side
of the tank where the tank overflowed, the mud pocked with the deep split hoofprints
of cattle. The tank was brimming full. Behind it, the windmill ran water whenever
the wind gusted up, the pump banged and clanked, the rod jerked up and down, then
the cold fresh clean water spouted out through a long pipe.

They set the lawn chairs in a line back from the tank. Alice stepped up on the concrete
apron and looked in and felt the cold water. On the bottom was a bed of mud and there
were strings of green moss around the edges. She could see black tadpoles squirming
away into the mud. She went back to the women.

Lorraine said, Well. Then she just proceeded to take her clothes off and laid them
out on a chair. She was white as cream and full breasted with blue veins in her breasts
with a swatch of dark hair below her stomach to match the dark hair on her head. They
looked at her. She
raised her arms. Oh God, what a beautiful day. She stepped toward the tank in the
hot manurey dirt and stepped up onto the concrete and leaned over and cupped her hands
in the water, her bare back and legs shining in the sun, and doused her face and hair
and her breasts and gasped, Oh God! Dear Lord! She lifted one foot onto the rim of
the tank and brushed her foot off and stepped over into the water, her body halved,
all of her full-fleshed body in the bright sun, and then lowered herself into the
water and cried, Goddamn! Oh Jesus! and lay out in the water and disappeared and came
up all white and shining. Jesus! Jesus! Then she stood up and turned to them. Come
on, all of you, she called. Get in.

Well then, said Alene.

And she took her clothes off too. She was pale and thin, a little bony, a little sallow,
with small breasts and thin arms and thin thighs and graying hair below. She walked
over to the tank and splashed herself and climbed in and squatted down and rose up
streaming. Oh Jesus! God bless us! Oh come in, Mother. Alice, come on.

Alice removed her clothes then. She had a girl’s flat chest and flat stomach, the
points of her backbone showed and her shoulder blades were sharp edged and she had
no hair there yet, her legs were tanned up to her thighs from wearing shorts and her
arms were tanned. She went to the stock tank and dipped her fingers in the water.
Lorraine and Alene held out their hands to her and she stepped over into the cold
water and caught her breath.

Honey, Lorraine said, go ahead and yell. You have to.

Oh Jesus, she said softly.

They laughed. Yes, Lorraine said. But yell this time. Yell.

Oh Jesus. Son of a bitch.

They laughed again. Where in the world did you learn that?

At school.

Well. That’s the way then. Let it out. Yell now.

She yelled a little bit.

That’s better.

Now they looked at Willa still outside the tank.

Mother, come on now. You must.

Oh. I don’t know.

Yes. Come on.

Well. Damnation. All right, then.

She took her glasses off and set them on a chair and removed her dress and removed
her bra and her white old lady’s underwear, she was flat chested with soft pale flaps
for breasts, the nipples pointing down, and had a sagging stomach and wide soft hips
folded a little and loose thighs and almost no hair below her stomach, almost as unhaired
in her old age as Alice was in her youth, and she came over and they held out their
hands to her, and she sat sideways on the rim and swung her legs over. Mercy heavens!
she cried. Mercy! She cupped water onto her face and chest. Lord! I’m an old woman
and I’ve never been naked outdoors before. Look at me. Have you, Alene?