Deliver Us from Evie (6 page)

I was remembering how Mom always told her don’t stick your hands in your trouser pockets when you walk, honey, it’s so masculine.

Christmas night I’d gone to sleep thinking of things like that—how Mom would always try to change her to be more feminine. And then I’d tried to turn it off by going over my phone call with Angel.

It hadn’t lasted long. I could hardly hear her with all the noise in the background. She said all her relatives were over at her place, and said to call her back, or else she’d see me in church on Sunday.

We were coming away from the hog pens, our two yellow Labs running ahead of us, when we heard the car coming and they began barking.

There wasn’t another car that came our way that sounded like that, not another car I’d ever seen anywhere the color of black cherries.

Evie stopped to light a cigarette and she didn’t even look up, but Dad said, “Now what’s she doing here?”

I said, “It’s not a she.”

Even on this cold gray winter day—the temperature ten degrees Fahrenheit, it’d said when we’d listened over the radio to the morning hog prices—Mr. Duff had the window down all the way, resting his arm on the sill, wearing the big cowboy’s Stetson he liked better than the caps every other farmer wore.

“Duff?” Dad said.

“Himself,” I said.

He got out of the Porsche and waddled our way while Evie called the dogs back.

Dad said, “Good morning, Mr. Duff.” He always called him Mister to his face. Everyone did.

“Morning, Douglas…. Morning,” nodded at Evie and me.

I said good morning but Evie didn’t say anything.

“What brings you over here?” said my father.

“I got something to get off my chest, Douglas.”

“Come on up to the house then. Cynnie’s got some coffee brewed. We only got decaf, though, I warn you, because Cynnie—”

He cut Dad off. “I’d rather not go up to the house. I’d rather just say what I have to say right here.”

We all waited.

“Parr,” Mr. Duff said, “you go along to the house.”

“I’ll go with you,” Evie said.

“No, you stay here,” Mr. Duff said. “This concerns you, too, Evie.”

“Take Pete and Gracie with you,” said Dad, so I whistled for the dogs to follow me.

“I
S THAT PATSY?” MOM
said when I got inside. “She got over here real fast. I just hung up from talking to her.”

“It’s him, not Patsy.”

Mom went to the window. “Mr. Duff? I saw the car coming down the road. I wondered how she could have gotten here when I just put the phone down.”

“What’d she call about?”

“She wanted to talk to Evie.”

“Maybe she wanted to warn her. He doesn’t look like he’s in a very good mood. Says he’s got to get something off his chest.”

“I was afraid of something like this,” Mom said.

She’d been working in her office.

Dad always said she was the brains and he was the brawn.

Whenever we got the morning hog prices, she’d call around and see what all the locals were offering, see who could outbid who, start angling for the buyer who’d get our load.

Christmas wasn’t an ideal time to sell hogs. Prices went down because folks favored poultry at holidays, but Dad wanted to pay some on the Atlee debt before the first of the year.

“What exactly were you afraid of, Mom?” I followed her into the kitchen.

She began pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Evie,” she said. “Mr. Duff’s on her case. You know that, Parr.”

“I don’t know what’s going on, though. I thought I did at one time, but now I’m not so sure.”

“What’d you think at one time?”

We sat down at the kitchen table.

I said, “I figured Evie and Patsy had this crush on each other.”

“What made you come to that conclusion?”

“Evie never had girls for friends, not even when she went to County High. She was always a loner.” I wasn’t going to tell on Evie: mention the postcard or “Asian Journey.” I wanted to see what Mom came up with.

“Evie never had a knack for making friends, of any kind.”

“Then Patsy Duff comes along and …” I shrugged and didn’t finish my sentence.

“It’s not Evie’s fault,” said my mother. “It’s Patsy Duff who started this thing.”

“What kind of thing is it anyway?” I asked.

My mother let out this long sigh and shook her head. “You called it right, I think…. I just hope you did, hope there’s nothing really going on, for Evie’s sake.”

“Does Mr. Duff think Evie’s a dyke?”

“I hate that word, Parr…. Someone like Evie gets the blame when there’s any suspicion of such a thing.”

“Do
you
think she’s one?”

“That’s crossed my mind, Parr. You’ve heard me nagging at her about trying to be more of a lady. Of course it’s crossed my mind.”

“What if she is one?”

“It’s going to be very hard for her if she is.”

“It’ll be hard for both of them, won’t it?”

“It’ll be harder for Evie. Evie can’t pass herself off as something else. It isn’t in her nature.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

I don’t know why I felt relieved to have it spoken, but I did. It was always there, but it was always put another way, as though all Evie needed was to dress up a little more, stop smoking no hands, take smaller steps, get her hair styled—then she’d be no different from anyone else.

It was a relief to tell the truth: to admit that my sister’s way wasn’t going to be fixed by a turtleneck sweater or a skirt. She was deep-down different.

“If Evie is a lesbian,” my mother said, and my stomach did a flip at the harsh sound of that word, “she’s got a bigger problem than some other girl would have who isn’t so stereotypical.”

“Like Patsy Duff. She doesn’t seem the type.”

“Exactly.” Mom sipped her coffee for a moment and then she said, “Parr, don’t tell your father about this conversation. Douglas is not a sophisticated man. He won’t understand this, if this is what it might be.” Then she glanced up at me. “Do you understand it?”

“I understand what a homosexual is because of all the AIDS stuff. But they never talk about females.”

“It’s not different. It’s loving the same sex. Your father’s always thought it was a big joke. You know how he makes fun of Cousin Joe.”

“I thought they were funny, too.”

“I know, Parr.” Mom got up and rinsed out her coffee cup. She said, “I just hope Evie has the name without the game. It’s bad enough to look that way, but it’s awful to look it and actually be it…. Then you’re a stereotype. You’re what everybody’s always thought one of those women was like.”

“I’m what everybody thinks a farm boy’s like. I’m driving around on tractors, going to 4-H, planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall—what’s the difference?”

“The difference is you’re not against the law, Parr. And the church doesn’t call you a sinner.”

“Maybe something’s wrong with the law.”

“It’s just not a wholesome thing to be.”

“You mean if you
look
it.”

“It’s better not to,
yes
,” said Mom emphatically.

We heard the Porsche leave a moment before we saw Dad and Evie come through the door.

Evie went upstairs without a word.

Dad stood there taking off his gloves and his cap.

“I’d punch him out if we didn’t need that bank loan,” he said. “You know what he told Evie?” He threw his cap and gloves on the table. “He said she was to stay away from his daughter! He said she was never to write her or try to see her, and get
this
: He said she was never to come anywhere near Duffarm!”

My mother was putting her coffee mug inside the dishwater.

“Did you
hear
me, Cynnie?”

“What did Evie say?” My mother’s back was still toward us.

“Evie just took it on the chin! What
could
she say? Evie knows we’re working on that loan!”

I said, “I better go out and test the prod. It might need batteries.”

If Dad heard me, it didn’t register. Nothing registered but what had just happened between Evie and him and Mr. Duff.

I started toward the door.

Mom said, “Have some coffee, Douglas.”

“I hate decaf! You get some real coffee for this house by dinnertime or I’ll eat down to The Paradise!”

“Why don’t you do that?” Mom told him in her quiet voice that meant she was boiling mad too. “Take in a movie while you’re at it, Douglas. We won’t wait up.”

I closed the door behind me.

I
CALLED ANGEL TWICE
that afternoon, and that night Angel’s mother phoned Mom and asked her if I could go there to Sunday dinner. They’d drive me over after church and Mrs. Kidder would drop me off later that afternoon.

“It pays to advertise,” my dad said.

“What does that mean?” Mom asked him.

“That’s what Parr’s been doing. Advertising himself on the telephone. Right, Parr?”

“I didn’t know you’d called her up, Parr.”

“Because he was using the barn phone,” Dad said. “I knew he wasn’t calling here. He was dragging the line all the way down to the cows so I wouldn’t hear him.”

“And they were mooing,” I laughed. “And Angel was saying, ‘Where are you, Parr? Out in the pasture?’”

I provided a little badly needed comic relief.

No one was saying anything about Mr. Duff’s visit. No one was saying anything much at all, unless they were saying it out of my earshot.

Evie stuck to business, complained that we got taken by the hog buyer, bitched because it’d been her turn to hose out the back of the truck, and allowed as how she’d rather get out of the hog business altogether.

“And live on what?” Dad snorted. “They’re our gold.”

You’d almost think none of it had happened, except for the red cashmere scarf Evie’d brought back with her from St. Louis. I saw it looped around her bedpost when she wasn’t wearing it, which she was, most of the time, except when we did the dirty work of getting the hogs to market.

Sunday morning she wore it to church.

Mom got the bright idea to ask Cord for Sunday dinner, and then, trying to act like it was an afterthought, she’d told him, “Why not join us for the service at St. Luke’s beforehand?”

I think she wanted the Duffs to see him with us, with Evie, because she pushed him into our pew next to my sister.

The only trouble was the Duffs weren’t at church.

Mom kept looking across at their pew, which stayed empty. I couldn’t remember a Sunday without one of them being there.

I kept watching Angel, and she glanced back at me a few times, too.

I could hear her voice, high and sweet through all the hymns, and Dad nudged me once and said, “That gal can sing!”

Bud Kidder, Angel’s brother, was there, too. He looked like Abraham Lincoln Jr., with thick black-framed eyeglasses, and he almost drowned Angel out with this big baritone voice.

The Kidders waited to introduce themselves to my folks after the service. Then the five of us squeezed into their little Ford and headed off to Floodtown.

After Mr. Kidder said grace, we ate chicken and dumplings on a table that pulled down out of the wall like a Murphy bed. Bud and Mr. Kidder had a long conversation about the book Bud had got him for Christmas,
The Foremost Mobile Home Fix-It Guide
, until Angel said that I probably didn’t want to hear anything about venting roofs or the installation of a tie-down and anchoring system.

“I don’t care,” I said. “We do a lot of fixing up over at our place, too.”

“I know your brother,” Bud said. “He’s not in my dorm, but I remember him from when we were naming girls we’d like to see be Ag Queen…. He wanted some sorority girl for queen, not even from Missouri, much less a farm girl.”

“Bella Hanna,” I said.

“We kept telling him we didn’t want anyone from Sorority Row. No one did.”

“You can’t tell Doug anything,” I said. “He went home with her for Christmas.”

“That must have broke your mother’s heart,” said Mrs. Kidder. “I hope you never do that to us, Bud.”

“It wouldn’t be for some sorority girl if I did,” he said.

“They couldn’t
all
be bad,” said Mr. Kidder.

“They’re not bad, Daddy,” Bud said, “they’re just snobs. The only time they want to date an ag student is when we have the Harvest Ball and crown the queen. They all want invitations to that. Then they drop us like hot potatoes.”

“Are you going to the university when you finish at County?” Mrs. Kidder asked me.

“I plan to.”

“He’s not going to be a farmer, though,” Angel said.

“I wished I’d never been one,” said Mr. Kidder.

“You love farming,” Bud said. “It was
where
we farmed, not
that
we farmed, broke your heart.”

“We didn’t have a choice,” Mr. Kidder said: “That was our land.”

Mrs. Kidder said, “What are you going to do if you don’t farm, Parr?”

“I haven’t decided yet, ma’am.”

“Just don’t be a banker,” Mr. Kidder said.

“I never would be,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be good at finances.”

“You have to be good at finances and you have to be good at telling people who need something you got it, but they can’t get it.”

“Like Fat Cat Duff,” said Bud.

“No name-calling, Bud,” said Mr. Kidder. “Parr here might be a friend of Mr. Duff’s.”

“Not me,” I said.

“I’ll tell you something funny about that daughter of his,” said Mrs. Kidder. “She come into the store and rented herself a P.O. box in the name of Jane Doe. I thought that was funny. Like John Doe? She paid up for six months, too.”

“Where’s this?” I asked.

“Mother works over at Barker’s General Store in King’s Corners,” said Mr. Kidder, who called his wife “Mother” just as she called him “Father.”

“They have a post office in there,” said Mrs. Kidder.

“And the best pies anywhere because Mother bakes them.”

“Patsy Duff rented a box there?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right.

Mrs. Kidder was nodding, but before she could speak, Mr. Kidder said, “Mother, I don’t think it’s supposed to be public information who rents those boxes.”

“Doesn’t she go off somewhere to private school?” said Bud. “Over near Jeff City?”