Deliver Us from Evie (4 page)

Mom wasn’t supposed to lift a finger on Christmas morning.

Evie lit a new Camel from an old one and said, “We’ll drive in to St. Louis on the twenty-third, stay over, and come back the next morning.”

“Stay over where?”

“Some friend of Patty’s has a place in Webster.”

“What are you going to wear, Evie?”

“My khaki trousers, my blue blazer, something like that.”

“To a
concert
? Evie, you have to wear a skirt! Patsy Duff will surely wear a dress to a concert!”

“Not this concert. It’s not chamber music, Mom—it’s Biker Pike.”

“I never heard of him,” Mom said. “Is he a rock star?”

“It’s a she. She does women’s stuff.”

“Is’ she like Judy Collins? I used to love her songs.”

“Yeah, something like her. Nobody will dress up, believe me.”

“Evie,” my mother said, “even if nobody dresses up, I doubt there’ll be anyone wearing men’s trousers. I have a pair of good gabardine slacks I’ve hardly worn. Try them on, honey. I can let them out or let the cuffs down, if necessary.”

Evie said, “Cork it, Mom.”

“Don’t speak that way to me. I’m trying to help you!”

I piped up then. “Will you two knock it off? Mom, let Evie off the hook for once!”

I was tired of Mom always on Evie’s case. I doubted she even got it. I got it, in a way. What I got was this blurred picture of Evie and Patsy with a crush on each other. It was blurred because that sort of thing was never clear to me, and I wasn’t even sure what that sort of thing really meant.

Dad had a distant cousin who farmed in Quincy, Illinois. Cousin Joe. Dad called him Cousin Josephine because he’d lived on a farm with another old man for thirty years. They were a couple, Dad said—“a couple of fruits.” I remember Dad watching their pickup come down our road on a visit once telling Mom, “Cousin Josephine’s here with his wife,” then laughing, and ducking Mom’s palm as she tried to swipe him.

I never thought much about them, and when the thing with Evie and Patsy started, I didn’t think they were the same way. Evie was just impressed by Patsy Duff, and I knew by then the feeling was mutual. I didn’t take it beyond that point. I wasn’t sure Mom had even got that far yet.

Mom blew Evie’s smoke away from her face and stood up to put the dishes in the dishwasher. She said, “I’m sorry, Evie, if I seem to nag…. I guess you know Patsy Duff better than I do.”

“And you know
me
,” Evie said. “I am what I am.”

Mom said, “I thought that was Popeye the Sailor Man.”

“Hey,” I said, “Mom made a joke!” and I grabbed my books and my gym bag and headed out to catch the school bus.

I thought about Evie on my way to County. This was the first time she’d connected with anyone where the feeling was mutual.

When she wasn’t working around our place, she either had her nose in a book or she played backgammon with Mom, Monopoly with me and Mom, or blackjack with Dad.

She had her second-hand Pontiac, but she didn’t use it much except to drive over to the library at King’s Corners. She let me drive it around the farm, and the roads close by, but I wouldn’t be able to get a license until my birthday in May.

I wasn’t the loner she was, but I hadn’t made any real friends at County yet either.

When you lived on a farm, you couldn’t stay around school after the last class, and do sports or hang out.

You were always needed at home.

So good for Evie, I thought.

There was someone in her life now besides Cord Whittle…. But I did, now and then, keep trying to remember the poem she’d written called “Asian Journey.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right … the part about touching.

I figured I’d take her at her word—it was just imaginary. And for sure she hadn’t been to China.

S
T. LOUIS GOT HIT
hard by a snowstorm on the morning of the twenty-fourth, and Evie phoned to say they were stuck there, probably until Christmas morning.

Mom had a long face after Doug called, just before we left for church.

“This isn’t much of a Christmas,” she said as Dad drove us past the snowdrifts, headed into St. Luke’s. The Duffs were Episcopalians, so that was the only church in town. A lot of Dufftonites drove over to King’s Corners to go to the Catholic church or the First Baptist.

“What do you mean this isn’t much of a Christmas?” asked Dad. “How do you think that makes Parr and me feel?”

“You’re right, Douglas. I’m not going to ruin things.”

“Speaking of ruining things,” Dad said, “the Church of the Heavenly Spirit burned down last night. Of all times to have it happen! Some of them will be in our church tonight.”

“I
heard
,” said Mom. “So we’re going to church with the holy rollers.”

“Honey, those holy rollers are our neighbors.”

“Some of them,” she said. “But most of them live over in Floodtown.”

Floodtown wasn’t much of a town. It’d popped up out of nowhere after the big flood of ’73. The river’d washed out this area of bottomland, and all the people living there—many of them tenant farmers or farmworkers living in trailers—moved up and settled in Floodtown. They had a general store and not much else except this shack with a cross on top they’d fixed up as a church.

We went past the Veterans’ Memorial Statue, where a Christmas wreath was attached to the end of the bayonet, and when we parked out in front of St. Luke’s, we saw that the Duffs were already inside. Mr. Duff’s Porsche was there, with “Duffarm” in gold on the door.

Evie’d taken Patsy to St. Louis in her Pontiac.

Before Evie’d left, I’d asked her how come Patsy didn’t let her drive the Porsche, and Evie’d answered that it belonged to Mr. Duff, and anyway she doubted he even knew Patsy had invited her to the concert. She’d said Patsy didn’t tell her dad her business because he was too controlling. Then I remember she’d added, “But he’ll never control Patty, because she’s got a will like the river.”

I suppose Evie’d made one of her “statements” about it—it was like her to put it that way. I remember a sign Mrs. Cloward tacked up in science that I used to stare at day in and day out, so I’d memorized it without even intending to:

NEVER CAN CUSTOM CONQUER NATURE, FOR SHE IS EVER UNCONQUERED
.

I liked sayings like that: thoughts about Nature and Fate, as though there was an invisible force behind life, something you couldn’t see turning you down this road and that, changing your destiny and you.

I wasn’t a religious person. I was more like Doug, who said he wasn’t an atheist, he wasn’t an agnostic, he was an almost. He almost believed. He didn’t know what it was he almost believed in, but he almost did.

Like Mom, I liked the ceremony of Christmas. The church was candlelit, and Mr. Duff had paid for all the decorations, as he did every year: pine-branch wreaths and garlands with red ribbons, poinsettia plants everywhere, red and white ones, and an enormous Christmas tree decorated with red and silver bulbs and tinsel, a huge gold star at the top.

We sang all the traditional carols, and we were about a half hour into the service before I saw her.

She wasn’t beautiful, not in the same sense that Patsy Duff was. She didn’t have the flashiness of Patsy. She didn’t even have makeup on. She had long black hair and a pale face, a red velvet dress with a white collar and white cuffs, and this great, clear voice I could hear over all the others: this high strong voice that seemed to be the only sure thing about her. She knew how to sing, and knew she did.

Everyone was looking around to see whose voice it was, but she paid no attention. She was standing between this man and woman who looked on the stern side, plain as white paste, and I knew they had to be from the Church of the Heavenly Spirit.

I also knew I’d been turned down a new path by whatever that force was that I almost believed in.

They say you can stare at the back of someone and they’ll eventually feel your eyes on them and turn around to see you. That works if you stare at the side of someone, too.

She was way across the other aisle when I set my mind and my eyes to concentrating on her, and finally she glanced over her shoulder and saw me.

I’d never been so bold in my life, never known the first thing about approaching some girl I just saw somewhere and didn’t know anything about. But some instinct got into me, some new, big feeling was pulling me, and I looked right into her eyes, and I nodded at her, and I smiled. I hoped my smile didn’t come off like a grimace. I’d never made myself smile in a way there’d be no mistake about it. I’d never faced up to a female in such a manner.

She didn’t smile back. I think she frowned a little: I think she wondered what I was doing.

I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I watched her through the sermon and the offering, and I knew she felt me doing it.

Then Reverend Southworth gave me the “in” I probably wouldn’t have needed anyway, I was so caught up in this new wind. He said, “When we leave here tonight, let us all greet the members of the Church of the Heavenly Spirit, who have joined us for this worship service. Let us let them know we feel the loss of their beloved church, and let us ask them to continue to worship with us for as long as it takes for them to rebuild. A Merry Christmas to all!”

I wanted to get over to her as soon as possible, but Mr. and Mrs. Duff stepped out of their pew just as we were heading down the aisle.

There were the usual hellos and Merry Christmases: Mrs. Duff with her sad eyes, small as he was, thin as he was fat, looking like a little bird afraid of being on the ground.

She and my mother were smiling at each other, shaking hands, and I had my eye fixed on the girl. She was moving slowly between her folks, not looking my way.

Then I heard my father’s voice boom: “I just hope the roads clear up so those kids get back here tomorrow!”

“What kids?” from Mr. Duff.

“Why, Evie and Patsy,” said my father.

“What are you talking about, Douglas?” said Mr. Duff.

I didn’t wait to hear the rest of the conversation. I pushed my way past people. I held up my arms and squeezed my way down the aisle sideways. I said, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Merry Christmas to you, too.”

I crossed to the aisle she was coming down, and I waited for her.

“M
Y NAME IS PARR
Burrman,” I said. “Merry Christmas, and I’m sorry your church burned down.”

She said, “I’m Angel Kidder. Thanks.”

“I’m Angel’s father, and this is her mother.”

I shook hands with her parents. The organ was playing “O Holy Night,” and other members of our congregation were reaching out to shake hands with the Kidders too.

Mr. Kidder looked like a young Abe Lincoln, complete with a short, coal-black chin beard. He was tall and blue eyed, not a smiler—none of them were, including Angel. The mother was medium height and pale like Angel, with these round, thick glasses, and a sprig of plastic holly pinned to her coat.

I said, “You have a real nice voice, Angel.”

She thanked me without looking at my eyes.

“Angel sings in our choir,” her father said.

“She often sings solos,” said her mother.

I could see Angel nudging them with her elbow to stop saying stuff about her.

“She was going to sing ‘“Tick!” Said the Clock’ before the fire,” said Mrs. Kidder.

“Mama!” Angel protested.

“That’s one I don’t know,” I said.

“You don’t sing ‘“Tick!” Said the Clock’ over to this church?” her mother said.

“I never heard it,” I said.

“
C-L-O-C-K—The world is like a shelf….
You don’t even sing that?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Maybe one Sunday Angel will sing it here.”

“Maybe,” said her mother.

Mr. Kidder said, “
I tick
,
tick
,
tick
,
quick
,
quick
.”

“Oh, Daddy.” Angel looked mortified.

We were heading out toward the church entrance where the Reverend Southworth was greeting everyone.

“Where do you go to school?” I asked her.

“King’s Corners.”

“I go to County.”

“I go there next year.”

I figured she was fifteen or sixteen. She was carrying a navy-blue duffel coat over her arm. Then she started putting it on and I held it for her.

“My brother went to County,” she said. “Now he’s at the university.”

“Missouri?”

She nodded, and I said, “So’s mine…. Maybe they know each other.”

“He couldn’t come tonight. One of the Fultons’ sows let down her milk, but she hasn’t farrowed yet, so Bud stayed in the barn with her.”

“Is your farm in Floodtown?”

“My daddy works on the Fulton farm in King’s Corners, and when he’s home Bud helps out there, too. But we live in Floodtown. We’re in the trailer park there. Sunflower Park.”

“We live on a little farm outside of town,” I said.

She was zipping up her coat, still not looking at my face.

“But I’m not planning to be a farmer,” I said.

“What are you going to be?”

That was the big question, wasn’t it? I’d been asking myself that question ever since I’d started in at Duffton School, and I still didn’t have an answer.

I said, “I’m going to be anything but a farmer.”

“I wasn’t born when we lost our place in the ’73 flood. The river just ran it down,
pffft
”—she snapped her fingers—“like that. Everything we ever owned got carried off. Daddy said the Lord in his mysterious way doesn’t step in at every crisis. He said he never wants to own another farm after that.”

“My sister says the river’s got a will of its own.”

“She’s right about that. Don’t make any plans for the river, because it’s got its own plans, and when the time comes, your plans won’t do you any good.”

“Have you got a Christmas tree up yet?”

For the first time she laughed. “Up yet? It’s Christmas Eve.”

“We got it up but not trimmed.”

“What are you waiting for?”

“For when we get home.”

“We put ours up a week ago and decorated it the same day. I like Christmas. I didn’t want to sing ‘“Tick!” Said the Clock’ for Christmas Eve. I wanted to sing a carol, but Pastor Bob said only the whole choir could sing carols or it wasn’t fair.”