“Well, then, maybe I’ll just go ahead and do it.” Mrs. Gooch ate a few more bites.
“Did you mean add the extra rooms,” Mr. Hennesey asked, “or turn one of our rooms into a double?”
Mrs. Gooch thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet.”
“I’d need notice if you were to do that, because I don’t think I could live in smaller quarters.” He spoke with a rapid precision, like a typewriter tapping out his lines. “Even with a reduction in rent, I don’t think I could.”
“And you, Miss Hartsoe?”
“Me? Why, I’ve just gotten here. I don’t—” She started to say she had no opinion, but then she remembered something O’Nora had once said about not being afraid to speak up. “I don’t think it would be such a good idea,” she said, again feeling sudden warmth in her cheeks.
“Don’t think what would be?” Mrs. Gooch demanded. She stared at Mary Bet, her whole face squinting, as if she were trying to figure out who Mary Bet thought she was.
“Well, I don’t imagine adding an extra person to the rooms would make anybody happy. Mr. Hennesey wouldn’t care for it,
and neither would I, now that I think of it. I grew up sleeping in the same room with my sisters, but they were my sisters. And, well, I don’t know how Amanda feels about it, but she has her room set up on this floor just the way she likes it. And as for adding rooms on the porch, I don’t know where you’d put all the boxes and things that’re out there now.” As she said all this she realized that Mrs. Gooch likely had no intention of doing anything different, that she’d just wanted to remind her boarders who was in charge, and now she’d gone and gotten an earful.
Mrs. Gooch gave her a disapproving look and said, “Well, you may be right. Though I
could
squeeze a roomer onto the porch if need be. How’s your father doing out there at the hospital?”
“He’s doing very well, thank you,” Mary Bet said. “Much better, they say.” She and Clara had gone up there a week ago and found him sitting in a chair in the solarium, his orange afghan covering his lap and his hands in a muff restraint. Two other patients were there as well, and a young male attendant in a white jacket. All four of them sat, staring patiently at the floor or the wall as though they were waiting for a train. Mary Bet had been planning to stay for two nights, but they ended up leaving after one—her father had seemed so far away in his mind, or on medication, that he was hardly aware she was there. When she tried to hug him, he pulled back and gave her such a look that she couldn’t help but wonder how he was being treated.
“He’s up there at Morganton, idn’t he?” Mrs. Gooch said, glancing at the others.
“Yes, ma’am, he is. It’s a lovely place out there. You should go out there sometime.”
“Me? I have no business out there. The very idea.” Mrs. Gooch made a little dismissive laughing noise, her chest rising and falling.
“I meant the area,” Mary Bet explained. “It’s pretty.” But Mrs. Gooch only stared back. Dessert was a small serving of cobbler or
pie; seconds were never offered, and the leftovers were locked away in a tin pie safe and the key secured in the pocket of Mrs. Gooch’s skirt. Mary Bet excused herself before the others this time, even before coffee, and said she was going to take a walk because it was such a nice evening for this late in the year. Mr. Hennesey and Amanda looked at her with confusion and envy, as if sorry they hadn’t thought of the same thing themselves, while Mrs. Gooch made a small joke about there now being more for them.
“Amanda,” Mary Bet said, “would you like to come out with me?” Amanda glanced first at Mrs. Gooch, who was looking out the window with a frown.
“Let me get my wrap,” Amanda said.
Mary Bet nodded and turned away so that she wouldn’t have to see Mrs. Gooch’s expression. As she headed to the front door, she heard Amanda’s chair scraping and then the clattering rhythm of the braces and the turned feet, and she knew that Mr. Hennesey was sitting there twisting his napkin, wanting to get up and help, but forced by Amanda’s orders to sit idle. Amanda had boarded here for nearly six months, Mr. Hennesey for a year, and he still had not adjusted to her presence, let alone to Mary Bet’s.
Mary Bet sat on the edge of the rocker, the only chair on the narrow front porch. One of the spindles was missing, and the rockers were misaligned so that the chair rocked with an unpleasant bump. Presently Amanda came along and, taking both braces in one hand and the wooden railing in the other, hobbled down the three steps to the flagstone walkway.
They headed up the road past the last few houses north of the courthouse and turned left. Mrs. Gooch was convinced that she had one of the largest houses in town, but while she did have a full second story, there were larger houses about, and certainly fancier. She at least kept it in good repair, which could not be said for some of the houses off the Durham Road, where thick woods
and vines curtained little bungalows and shacks, a few of them occupied by black folks who had bought or inherited property from former masters.
“What do you think of Mrs. Gooch?” Mary Bet asked, feeling the tingling delight of a potential friendship.
“I nearly froze last week,” Amanda said. “The boiler doesn’t work right, and she only keeps one chimney burning. But my room’s on the other side of the house.” They were walking so slowly Mary Bet could smell Amanda’s perspiration and the lavender from her hair; she tried slowing down even more. “I shouldn’t complain though.”
“You have every right to complain,” Mary Bet said, and when she saw Amanda brighten she added, “You oughten pay to be cold.” She felt a stirring of something within her—her very newness to this town and this life gave her a strange power, a freedom to be whatever kind of person she wished to be. She had always wanted O’Nora’s boldness of spirit and Myrt’s gentle wisdom and poise—she didn’t want to
be
them exactly, but to enfold them into herself.
“You think I should say something about it?” Amanda asked, peering briefly at Mary Bet. There was a guarded tone now, a challenge, a woman doubting a youth.
“Yes, I think you should,” Mary Bet said firmly, for there was no sense in retreating to a more passive role until she had discovered her limits as a decisive person, at least with this one friend. Amanda nodded thoughtfully, and Mary Bet continued, “I think you should say, ‘Mrs. Gooch, it’s cold as ice in my room. If that other fireplace works, I want to light it a-nights.’ Tell her I’ll do it for you, that way she’ll know we’re together on it.”
Amanda laughed, but it was a strange, whimpering kind of sound high up in her throat, as though she were unpracticed in laughter. “Aren’t you cold up there at all?” she asked.
“No, I must have thick blood. But I’ll say I am.” And now Amanda grew quiet, and Mary Bet wondered if she had said
something that bothered her. Amanda set her face in a determined way, her lips pressed together, as she struggled along.
“You don’t need to say that if it’s not true,” Amanda said quietly. “I’ll manage fine.” The blotch on her face seemed to darken just a bit, though there was so little light left to the evening it was hard to tell.
“Do you ever hear Mr. Hennesey singing?” Mary Bet asked.
“Oh, Lord,” Amanda replied, this time with a laugh from deeper down. “I don’t understand why Mrs. Gooch hasn’t kicked him out for drinking, but it’s surprising what she … tolerates and doesn’t tolerate. I was going to say ‘likes,’ but I don’t think she likes anything, except for peppers and cold rooms.”
“What about you? What do you like?”
“Oh, in my spare time I like to read dime novels—romance and Westerns. Some people think they’re trashy, but I like them because I can be in my room and I’m miles away having a great adventure.”
“Do you want to live an adventurous life?”
“Me? Heavens no, I wouldn’t care for that. I don’t think I’d like chasing Indians and camping out under the stars, and I’ve had my heart broken once and that was enough for me.” Amanda stopped to pull something out of her shoe, Mary Bet waiting for her to tell about her broken heart, but the moment passed and just as Mary Bet thought of a way to ask about it, Amanda said, “What about you? I imagine you like going to dances and parties and that kind of thing, with boys draped all over you.”
Mary Bet made an embarrassed little laugh, shaking her head; she was grateful it was too dark to see her complexion. “I don’t know why you’d think that. I didn’t know I seemed so frivolous.”
“Who said anything about frivolous? If I was pretty I would go to dances every weekend. Or I would’ve at your age. At your age, though, I wouldn’t have said that. I would’ve said that dancing was a waste of time, that it was for foolish people who wanted to look
foolish.” A dove called, somewhere off in the darkness, and Amanda paused to button her sweater. “We should be getting back,” she said. Instead of continuing around the long block, they turned and headed back the way they’d come, Mary Bet watching the ruts in the road as carefully as if she were the one dragging her feet over them. Just taking an evening stroll could be an adventure, she thought, and she was suddenly so happy and filled with hope that she told herself she would stay friends with Amanda for the rest of her life.
Mary Bet worked in the courthouse from eight to noon in the morning, and then from one until four in the afternoon, Monday through Friday, and from eight to noon on Saturdays. Every day she walked past the Confederate Monument and through the brick arcade to the ground floor entrance, then down the hall, and to the right. At the end of this hall was the office of her cousin, Sheriff Hooper Teague. She no longer knocked timidly before she entered, for she was usually the first to arrive. She liked getting there before Toby, the errand boy, because she would be sitting regally at her desk—a pine table with one drawer—and she would tell him that when he had finished stoking the fireplaces with coal, he could see to making sure the lamps were filled with kerosene before he went and fetched the newspaper, which the sheriff liked to have on his desk every morning when he arrived. With the windows this side of the building not getting lit up good until afternoon, there was nothing worse than running out of kerosene when you were in the middle of typing up a warrant.
She had learned some shorthand in school, and it was getting better every day. She improved so rapidly, developing her own method for transcribing the letters and notes the sheriff dictated, that within three weeks she was sitting in on meetings, and old Miss Mumpford, who had been a general courthouse secretary for as long as anyone could remember and whose hearing was no longer reliable, could relax and go fill the coffeepot, which she was
happy to do after so many years of straining to hear every word of a meeting on tax collection policy. Mary Bet promised to relay any important gossip she overheard.
Sometimes she was allowed to write up the minutes, summonses, and judgments in the big leather-bound docket books. She picked up enough legal jargon to know what was what, and she started sitting in on the more interesting court cases. Many of them were property disputes of some sort, or a job contract one party had reneged on, and there were assaults and lots of divorces, usually because of adultery. Black and white, rich and poor, came through the courtroom, though most were poor.
Hooper’s standing invitation was for Sunday dinner, and though Mary Bet had graciously accepted the first two weeks, she didn’t want her cousin to feel duty-bound, and so she made up excuses. But one morning in the spring he stopped at Mary Bet’s desk and said, “Mary Bet, I have a little surprise for you. There’s someone coming I want you to meet.”
She kept her hands poised over her typewriter and, before she had time to think of an excuse said, “Thank you, Sheriff, I’ll be there.” Then, just as her cousin was about to disappear out the door, she asked, “Who is it?”
“His name is Stuart Jenkins. He’s the new Presbyterian circuit preacher. It doesn’t matter that you’re Baptist. He’s a nice young man. He’s living in Silkton, but he’ll be preaching in town this Sunday—you know it’s Presbyterian week.”
“All right,” she said. She wasn’t thrilled, though she couldn’t have said why.
“He doesn’t know many people around, and neither do you. It would do you good to get out and meet some nice people, and who better than a preacher? I know his folks—they run one of the silk mills. They’re very good people …” He paused and winked. “And they have some money. Quite a bit from what I hear.”
And then, just as Mary Bet was thinking how much Hooper sometimes resembled his mother, she remembered the circuit rider from long ago. She’d thought he was the Devil, with his black boots and his red-eyed horse, coming to take her—he’d said he was coming back for her someday. Of course it was foolish, what she was thinking—he was on a different circuit, and he’d be old now. Still, she could not help but see him clearly, with his long black coat and his slouch hat, and had there not been a crow on his shoulder, or was that something she had added from one of the many times she had seen him in her dreams and imaginings? She was not afraid of him, only curious—she wanted to see his face and talk to him.
“Would it be all right,” Mary Bet hazarded, “if I brought a friend along? Amanda Tomkins?”
“Of course, of course. I’m glad you’ve made friends with her. You know her father made off with money from the railroad safe? They never said how much. He just disappeared and never came back. I think he ran off with a Nigra woman that used to work down there, because she disappeared right around the same time.”
“I didn’t know that,” Mary Bet said. She thought that if Cattie Jordan had told her the same story it would only have been to prove that she knew things, that she had the upper hand around this town because she knew everybody’s business. But coming from Hooper, it didn’t even seem like gossip—it was just something he knew and had confided to her as a friend and newcomer.
The Sunday dinner was a welcome relief from the tedium and stinginess of Mrs. Gooch’s table. She and Amanda took places opposite each other, while Hooper and Mr. Jenkins sat at the heads. Hooper served tremendous plates piled with succulent roast, and told everybody to speak up when they needed more. Working away, his dark brows knit in concentration and his bushy sideburns oozing sweat, he told them that, since the blessing had already been
said, they should sail in as soon as their plates were served, because there was no point in letting the food get cold. She asked Mr. Jenkins if the blessing he’d said was a Presbyterian blessing.