Lady (32 page)

One day I saw Elthea in the A. & P. She was buying dog food for Honey. She caught my look, and I ducked around the cereal counter, hiding myself behind a pyramid of Quaker Oats boxes. I waited, wondering how I could get out without her seeing me again. Then, from the other side, I felt a hand on my shoulder. Taken by surprise, I whirled, and looked up into Elthea's face. My sudden movement caused the pyramid of boxes to come tumbling, and I knelt to retrieve them as they rolled around in the aisle. Elthea stooped and helped me.

"You ought to come back," she whispered, bringing her face close to mine. "Ought to talk to Jesse. Ought not to go treating him that way."

I dropped the Quaker Oats boxes and stood. She reached for my hand. I pulled away.

"You ought to. Otherwise, it may be too late, and you'll be sorry."

I ran from the store. When I looked back, Elthea was just standing there, watching me go.

The ultimate tragedy came late in the summer, just before school began. One afternoon, Lew, Harry, and I went to dig clay for a cliff-dwellers' model we intended building, the clay to be mixed with shredded paper and dry asbestos, a makeshift adobe which we would bake until hard.

Clay of the sort we needed could be found around the culvert in the bank below the railroad crossing, and there we went, with a garbage can, a shovel, and a wagon. Dora Hornaday was in her accustomed spot at the freight depot, throwing rocks in the cinder bed. Dora's treatments at the clinic had been proceeding, the stoppage in her auditory canals alleviated to a large degree by the drops which were administered daily, and she still had wads of cotton plugged in her ears; thus, if formerly she had pretended to be hard of hearing, now she gave evidence of hearing nothing at all.

At the crossing we saw Lady Harleigh's Packard pulling in at the Rose Rock soda-pop works. She announced to one of the cappers, standing on the steps, her intention of purchasing a case of ginger ale. While Jesse got out of the driver's seat and opened the car trunk, she took a parcel from the back and carried it toward the station, intersecting our path just as we got to the tracks.

"Hello" was all she said, giving me not the smallest glance as she crossed the road to the freight station and walked up the loading ramp. But a great hello to Dumb Dora, sitting on the platform playing with something. Her ears wadded with cotton, she made no acknowledgment of the greeting. "What's that you have there," Lady continued, "a hoptoad?" I saw something dark leap in Dora's hands before she imprisoned it again. "I have another package, Mr. Phelps," Lady told the stationmaster as she went inside. Dora released the toad and let it hop along the platform, while she crouched behind it and intently watched its every move.

I trundled the wagon after Lew and Harry, who crossed the tracks and descended the bank to the culvert. At the bottom Lew waded in with the shovel and began digging out the clay, while I knotted the end of the rope on the bail of the garbage pail to pull it up to the wagon above. Where we were certain we could discover plenty of clay there was little, and Lew found it necessary to make his way farther along the stream, Harry following after with the bucket, while I played out the length of rope, tying the end around my waist, preparatory to pulling the pail up. When Lew signaled, I began hauling away, the bucket sloshing water onto the dirt bank as it moved at an angle toward me. When I had it in my grasp, I dumped the clay into the wagon. Digging my boots into the slippery mud, I tossed the bucket back down to Harry, who tossed it to Lew, who began refilling it. The train whistle sounded from up the tracks. I hoped the new engineer didn't think I was planning on slowing the freights that day. Just then Lew called to haul away, and I began arm-over-arming the bucket up the embankment. I glimpsed Jesse on the Rose Rock steps, with a man carrying the case of ginger ale and stowing it in the car trunk. Jesse backed out, and just before the striped wigwag arm began signaling, he started the car across the track.

What followed took only seconds. The train whistle blew three sharp blasts in rapid succession. I thought they were warnings for Jesse, who inexplicably had jerked the car to an abrupt stop just short of clearing the crossing, had thrown open the door, jumped out, and was hurrying along the railroad ties. Then I saw what was happening: Dora, crouched over the hoptoad, was directly in the path of the oncoming train. Behind her, I saw the front of the engine as it bore down on her, the whistle shrieking fiercely. People were running from all directions, Jesse from the crossing, Lady from the freight office, Mrs. Hornaday from her porch, while Dora -- her ears plugged with cotton and oblivious to her peril -- remained intent on her toad.

"Dora! Dora!" Lady cried.

A shower of sparks flew up from the train wheels as the engineer at last applied the brakes. Jesse was straining as he raced along the ties. I heard Lady call out to stop him, then my foot slipped and I slid part way down the muddy bank. The train thundered past above me. As I got the rope untied and clambered back up the bank, the cowcatcher struck the Packard with a grinding concussion. Gradually the train slowed to a stop. I leaped over the coupling of two freight cars in time to see Jesse safe beside the tracks as he handed Dora over to her aunt.

He pushed his hat back and wiped his brow with relief, then drew his shirt front from his chest and blew inside it to cool himself. As the trainmen came hollering from both directions, he seemed to be fumbling for a handkerchief. He took an awkward step forward, and a second. Then his arms went rigid, his head snapped back, and his hat fell off. Lady cried out, and as she reached him he toppled forward, the weight of his fall too great for her to stop, and he collapsed next to the tracks as the engineer and the other trainmen came running up. Dora stood silently by until her aunt pulled her away. I ran to Lady.

She knelt in a patch of cinders, which must have bruised her knees painfully. Oblivious, she cradled the body of the black man in her arms. She gave me a quick frantic look as I knelt beside her and looked down at Jesse. His breath came in a raspy sound from deep in his chest, which his hand spasmodically clutched, released, then clutched again. Lady held herself practically motionless, trying to quell the results of her exertions, as if of itself her panting might cause Jesse to expire. His gaze rested on me for a moment, but whatever expression was there remained for me unfathomable. He called for God, once, then twice. Lady looked up at the circle that had gathered around and asked that someone call a doctor and a priest. Mr. Phelps said it was being attended to. Jesse's eyes closed and I thought he had died. The others did, too, for I could hear the whisper of breath that went among them.

Lady tried to change her position slightly, and Jesse's head fell back against her breast. In a moment he opened his eyes again; the darks seemed to roll downward from under his lids, focused on me.

"Stupidy," he whispered with a little smile. I did not know why he said it, or what he meant, nor do I know now. But I have often thought of his lying in the train tracks with that pale, gray smile, and it seems to me it perhaps was his comment on the indignity of his dying -- the foolish, un-hearing child, the train bearing down, his running despite the doctor's orders. Or perhaps it was the fact of the breach between us, that after all it had mattered little, that things that came between people, that made them unhappy or drove them apart, that caused grief and pain, that scarcely matter -- all of these were "stupidy." Or perhaps he meant all of life.

"Shake, son?"

The sight of his face blurred with my tears as I put my white hand into his black one and I felt the smallest pressure.

"Shake, sir," I whispered back, clamping my other hand between my knees until it hurt. Still he looked at me, and his expression seemed to say, We are different, but what does it matter now; it all comes to the same thing.

He lifted his chin slightly; then his face was obscured as Lady's head bent toward him and her hair fell across. I heard a mumbled sound, several, then a pause. When Lady raised her head, calling again for a priest, Jesse was dead.

I felt someone's hand on my shoulder, and Mr. Phelps helped me up, while the Rose Rock man moved about the circle of faces repeating, "Give 'im air." One of the trainmen knelt to Lady and tried to extricate her from her position. Mute, she shook her head, folding her arms around Jesse's shoulders and holding him fiercely against her. We backed off, silently watching until Dora, eluding her aunt, approached and looked uncomprehendingly down.

"Dead?" she asked in her thick voice. Lady looked up at her and nodded. A siren wailed out on the street and in a moment a policeman's motorcycle slowed up, scattering the watchers. Lady meanwhile was struggling to get her arms out of the sweater she was wearing over her blouse. She moved herself from under Jesse's head, then pillowed it on the bunched-up sweater. I watched with horror as Dora bent and set her hoptoad on Jesse's motionless breast. Lady drew back in one quick recoiling movement as the toad sprang from the dead man's chest onto his thigh, then into the cinders, where it crouched, blinking and not knowing where to move next.

"Dead," Dora murmured again before her aunt came and led her away. "My hoptoad. My hoptoad."

I looked at Harry, at Lew, and stepped around Jesse's body to crouch by Lady, offering her my hand. She stared at it, then at me, then at Jesse, then spurned my help, getting to her feet unaided. Someone came from a car that had pulled up and helped her toward it. The train engineer stepped up for a closer look, then shook his head.

"Listen," he said, "someone get this coon's car off my tracks, can't they? I got a late train here."

Jesse's body stayed by the railroad tracks for two hours more, while it was decided what must be done with it. Mr. Foley, the local undertaker, was called, but when he arrived and discovered whose body it was, he found that his schedule did not permit him to do the undertaking. Finally a firm in the city agreed to make the funeral preparations and Jesse was taken away.

Interment became another problem. Three freed slaves were buried in a corner of the village cemetery, and Jesse might have joined them, except that since Edward's remains already rested within the grounds, and Lady herself would one day join him, the cemetery was deemed unsuitable. The Catholic church had no burial ground of its own, and so, after services, the body was held to be returned to Barbados, whence it had originally come. Lady and Elthea were to take it home.

Helen Zelinski, Rabbit, and Dora were there to see them off, also Colonel Blatchley, and members of my family. I did not go over, but sat on our porch steps, working hard to put my roller skates on. I watched across the Green. A taxi arrived, the bags went into the front seat beside the driver, Lady got in, and Elthea. The door closed. Everyone waved. The taxi pulled out of the drive. I skated down our front walk, and turned up the main walk. I kept my head down, fists jammed in my pockets. Then I heard the taxi stop. The door was flung open, and Elthea came hurrying across the Green on her high heels, the bracelets on her wrists jangling. I stopped skating, watching her come, and when she reached me she threw her arms around me and pulled me to her. I could smell the Midnight in Paris perfume I'd given her last Christmas.

"I'm sorry," I said, "I'm sorry. . . ."

"I know. I
know
."

She hugged me again, then let me go, and I skated away up the walk. I heard the taxi door slam again, and the driver stepped on the gas. I skated as fast as I could, trying to catch the taxi, but it disappeared up Broad Street. I stopped, breathless, and leaned against a tree. Crying, I punched the tree trunk until my knuckles bled.

The coffin had been brought to Lamentation Station, where Elthea and Lady boarded the train with it -- Jesse in the freight car, the two women in a passenger car -- seeing it first to New York, then by ship to the Caribbean.

With a nigger, the coon, the xvhatyamacallit dead and gone, removed from sight and a little from memory, people, not discounting myself, found they could afford to milk the dry teat of whatever human kindness could be managed. Notes of condolence were delivered daily by Mr. Marachek -- whose mailbag had been the original source of the misery -- lines in longhand on monogrammed stationery offering regrets that Mrs. Harleigh's houseman had departed this vale of tears and hoping that when Mrs. Harleigh was more herself the undersigned would be permitted to call.

No one was. It was the death of Edward Harleigh, twenty years before, repeated. When Lady returned, without Elthea, she closed herself up in her house again. It was to be her final retirement. Aggie brought the unopened notes home and answered each one "in the name of Mrs. Edward H. Harleigh," with thanks to the sender.

Summer ended, and I prepared to go away to school, as had been promised by Ma. Lew and Harry and Aggie had already returned to their respective classes, and because Blankenschip opened later I was left practically alone, packing my belongings in two laundry cases which would convey my things and would also serve as containers to send home my shirts and underwear in for Ma to take to the Sunbeam and then ship back to me.

Daytimes, there were only Kerney and Nancy around, and she, usually so talkative, was stunned, almost mute, seeing to her household duties soberly if not grimly. The scandal had been as great a blow to her as to anyone else, or so I believed, though she had never discussed her feelings, but as we went about our various activities I could feel her dark eyes on me, as if with Jesse's passing I, a white boy, had become a kind of enemy, though she never slackened in her work, or in her efforts to please me. But when at my accustomed time I came into the kitchen for my sandwich and milk she always found an excuse to be elsewhere, and never did I hear the old refrain to take my Iradol-A, or to zip up my windbreaker when it got cold.

Meanwhile there was Ag, whom I had come to regard as my nemesis, whose blue accusing eye seemed to follow me wherever I went, scornfully blaming me, and waiting for me to make a move toward Lady, and ask for her forgiveness, and for Jesse's.