1917–1918
T
HEY HAD TWO
months before he was off to training. They went to church picnics and on group outings with friends. Mary Bet got Flora to come along on a bicycle expedition to Siloam Springs, where it was loud with whip-poor-wills. And one Saturday they went in two automobiles, in a merry group that included Amanda and Mr. Hennesey and Clara and her husband, to a nickelodeon in Raleigh. The piano player was quite lively, they thought, but they felt uncomfortable with all the cigarette smoke and the smell of beer and the click of balls from the adjacent poolroom. Leon had been there before, and when they were out on the sidewalk Mary Bet asked him if he was a drinking man. He said he had “had the occasional drop,” but, no, he was not a drinking man. She looked at his broad, strong features and let it go. Afterwards they went to a real movie theater and saw a Mary Pickford feature, and they all laughed and later crossed the street for ice cream sundaes.
During the week Leon worked hard, helping the interim superintendent, a young teacher from Hartsoe City, prepare for the coming year. The county board thought it a shame that their new superintendent should be taken off to war so suddenly, but they told him he’d come back a hero and be even more ready to tackle the job.
Every one of their fleeting weekends, Leon and Mary Bet spent at least a few hours together. They went to a croquet and watercolor party, and to a pig roast out at Leon’s brothers’ place, where they put big yellow onions on the coals until the outsides were black. And one time he took her to Chapel Hill to a lecture on the German Immigrant Question, in which the lecturer cautioned the audience to be on their guard but not to draw hasty conclusions. “All of our families were immigrants at one time,” he said.
On the weekend before Leon was to leave, Mary Bet invited him to a musicale at Clara’s house in Hartsoe. They borrowed a friend’s Oldsmobile, and when they got there it was just like the old days. Afterwards, they drove across the creek and up to Mary Bet’s old house. They got out and stood admiring it, the wide porch with its fancy balustrade seeming to welcome them back, and Mary Bet pointed out where such and such had happened. She was hesitant about going up to the door, but Leon went on ahead and said he’d like to look inside. He knocked and a small, friendly-faced woman in her middle thirties came to the door. Mary Bet recognized her as the wife of the couple who had rented and then bought the house more than ten years ago. Leon introduced himself, and by this time Mary Bet was at his side. The woman invited them in.
The house had a different smell, but there was something familiar about it too, a dark whiff of well-trod pine and the lingering sense of a ghost tribe that had merely moved to the corners to accommodate a new familial presence. They sat in the parlor on a tired formal sofa with a red brocade. Mary Bet said she’d heard
the Dorsetts had moved, and the woman said that they had gone back to Salisbury after Mr. Dorsett was fired for mouthing off at the manager.
“You know there’s a bag full of gold around here somewhere?” Leon said.
“Is that right?” the woman asked, looking at Mary Bet to see if Leon was serious.
Leon got up and went to the window. “Colored fellow that used to live here buried it out there somewhere. Isn’t that right, Mary Bet?”
Mary Bet came and stood beside Leon, feeling the warmth of him through his shirt. He had kissed her for the first time only the day before, and now there was but one week until he left. She wondered if he were not a little afraid of her—did she give off an attitude of superiority that made him treat her like a piece of china? He seemed so earthy and manly with his friends; the expressions he used and the way he laughed and joked made you think he’d be more physical and aggressive. She appreciated his tact, but now she wanted him to hold her. “Yes,” she said, “old Zeke buried that money of my grandfather’s. We dug around but never found it.”
Outside, a girl was playing in a crab apple tree that had been too small for climbing when Mary Bet was her age. These people had let the place go a bit. The old icehouse was scabbed with whitewash, and high weeds grew about the pump and its washstand, upon which lay a few grimy dishes. There was no need for the pump, since the house had running water; it also had electric current, which the power company had installed for free. Electricity was coming to Williamsboro too—it was just a matter of time.
On the wall beside the fireplace a cuckoo came out of his clock and announced the time. The pinecone-shaped weights shifted, and Mary Bet remembered the sapphire pin.
Leon turned to the lady of the house. “Shall we go out and tell your daughter about the buried treasure?”
When the woman began leading Leon through the side porch, Mary Bet held back. She went over and ran her finger along the crack beside the fireplace. Still there. She thought she’d take it out now, but she couldn’t make herself do it. It felt like stealing. The pin was no longer hers, never had been—it was her mother’s, and then Myrtle Emma’s.
She went out with the others, and around to the back where the yard was nearly a meadow, its high grass concealing a choir of crickets and snap wings. They still had a garden, but it was much smaller, the tangle of berry bushes and briars climbing farther up out of the gully. Their hostess took them around to the front, and Mary Bet nodded at what she said, as though everything were new to her.
The woman asked, “Do you all have children?”
Leon laughed and glanced at Mary Bet, who pretended she hadn’t heard. “No, ma’am,” he said. “We’re—no, we don’t.”
“We’re not married,” Mary Bet said.
The side yard leading to the barn was in much better condition. The grass was clipped, and edged by cheerful borders of petunias and dahlias and hydrangeas. It was as though the house had turned its back on its history, leaving a preserve where children could play. They stood in the shade of the apple tree where her father had plopped himself, his gun in his lap. Over against the summer kitchen, vines of morning glories crept up the side of the greenhouse. The windows were clean, and Mary Bet could see a profusion of hothouse plants inside.
They thanked their hostess and made their way back to the car. Leon held the door for Mary Bet, then went around and switched on the magneto. She watched him cranking the engine and wondered: Is this competent, kind, irreverent, jolly man to be my life’s companion? They waved to their hostess, who was standing on the front porch. And as their hands came down, she took hold of
Leon’s hand and squeezed it. He smiled at her, apparently unsurprised, though she wondered he couldn’t hear her heart thumping.
They were quiet on the drive home, and as they approached her house, he slowed the car and stopped a block away. “What’s the trouble?” she asked.
“I’m going to miss you, Mary Bet.” He leaned over and, because she had taken off her hat for the drive and put a shawl on her head, he could only kiss her mouth. She kissed him back, wondering briefly if the neighbors were watching. His lips were soft as a woman’s—of course they were. It had been so long since she had kissed a man on the mouth, but Joe Dorsett was still only a boy then. She could hardly count Mr. Jenkins, because he had not seemed like a man somehow, but a preacher. Leon was strong and yielding, he tasted like cigars and salt and warm water, and she wanted him to go on kissing her like that, though she was afraid it wasn’t the thing to do, out here on the street a block away from her own church. And yet she wanted more, that feeling of the essence of all passion held in a single kiss.
She pulled back and said, “That’s enough for now.” She smiled and put her hand on his cheek. Life, she thought. I haven’t missed it yet.
“I could come inside.”
“You’re a sweet boy,” she said, wondering where those words had come from—was it something she’d said to Joe Dorsett long ago?
“Will you marry me when I come home?” He kept leaning in to her, as though he could hold her there just by willing it.
“I don’t know, Leon. I’ll think on it.” She didn’t mind that it wasn’t a proper proposal on bended knee. She just was unsure how she felt about the idea of being someone’s wife, a helpmate and friend for the rest of their lives, sleeping with him, having his children. She was afraid of being such a disappointment that he would go off to a city to find satisfaction—probably he already had. Who
was he, really? He wasn’t family. But wasn’t that how families were made, by two strangers? It was all so overwhelming, with his big presence here in this automobile, as though she were being driven headlong into some future that could only end in worse tragedy than she’d already known. All this swooped through her mind, and then she heard her own breathing, and his, and she said, “I don’t know if I can give up the love of my friends for some kind of dangerous love.”
He began to laugh, then stopped himself. “You don’t have to give up your friends. And I’m not dangerous.” He held out his arms. “See?”
His smile was comforting and so familiar she thought he must have some sort of spell over her. Was she in love? “I’m very fond of you, Leon,” she said. “But I’ll need time to ponder it. I want you to take good care of yourself while you’re away.”
And then they kissed again for a long time, and somehow, she could hardly recall, she was in her house again. Had he driven that last block, or had they walked it? She knew that he had held her, standing outside the house—she could still feel his arms around her, the weight and shape of him, even his manhood pressing against her belly, urging her to give up everything and come with him. And here was Flora, her thin lips breaking into a tolerant smile, her foot working the treadle and her hands feeding the machine.
“Well?” Flora said, “Did you make passionate love?”
“Psssh, Flora.” Then, in a serious voice she said, “I told him he better take care of himself.”
“He’s not that kind, Mary Bet. He’ll take care of everybody else before he takes care of himself.”
“I know it,” Mary Bet said. And she thought, if he doesn’t come back, I won’t have to take the risk of marrying him—and losing everything. It’s up to God. “Forgive me,” she said.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She came over and kissed Flora on the top of her head. “I’m just not feeling well. I’ll go on up.”
He was five weeks training in Durham, and she went up to see him twice. He wanted her to come again, but she couldn’t bear the sadness when they had to say good-bye, the way he held her and looked at her, that confident smile making her heart flip, tugging at her deep inside. She wrote trying to explain this, and how she was praying for him, but she could never manage to say what she felt because there were things that could only be said face-to-face, not so much in the words but in the way they were said.
And then he was off to Camp Sevier, outside Greenville, South Carolina, and they wrote to each other once and sometimes twice a week, so that the conversations would get ahead of each other, there was so much they both had to say. Mary Bet’s biggest news came early the next year. “You won’t believe what has just happened,” she wrote. “I don’t think I can myself.”
Congress had recently passed a law extending the draft age to forty-five, and suddenly millions of men were either in training or on their way. One day Hooper called Mary Bet into his office and told her to take a seat. “You heard about the conscription?” he asked.
“Miss Mumpford mentioned it. She keeps up with all the news.”
“I’ve decided to enlist.”
“What? You’re forty-seven years old.”
“I don’t feel that old. Do I look it?”
“No, but—” Mary Bet looked around the office, at the picture of the President and the old governor, at Hooper’s wire baskets of papers, his jacket on the door peg and the tin badge affixed to the lapel, as though for a clue to what she should say. “You can’t just leave us with no sheriff.”
“I’m not going to, Mary Bet Hartsoe.” And now he smiled at her in a way that made her insides churn—what in the world was he planning on doing? Did he think he could be sheriff of Haw
County while running around the woods of South Carolina? “I plan to nominate you to take over while I’m gone.”
Mary Bet just sat there, staring at Hooper’s smooth walnut desk and thinking, as she often had, how like chocolate it looked. What had he just said to her? He’d let his walrus mustache grow so long it seemed to match the long ends of his string tie.
“Well?”
“Well, I’ll have to think on it.”
“There’s nothing to think about, and no time to. We’re meeting tonight to put it to a vote—just a formality—and you and me are drawing up the papers today.” So he was not kidding her. “You’re up to it, Mary Bet. I’ve never seen a more capable woman, and not many a man either. You know how to get everybody to agree, and you don’t suffer fools—it’s just what we need for a peacemaker. If you change your mind by this evening, we’ll talk about it.”
“But I haven’t said anything to change it from.”
Hooper laughed at this. “I like your attitude, Miss Hartsoe, Sheriff Hartsoe. Don’t say anything that you have to unsay later on.”
“There’s a lot I’d unsay if I could. Hooper, you can’t be serious.”
“Mary Bet, I was thinking of running for state office anyway, and leaving you in charge for a few months, say, one court term. Now I’ll have to put that off a while. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be gone more than a few months.”
“But shouldn’t there be an election?”
“Next fall, next fall. You’ll be fine until then. Nobody’ll misbehave around here too badly, and if they do you’ve got fine deputies in all seven townships. The only dirt you need get on your shoes is from walking to the courthouse.”
Mary Bet kept shaking her head. “But what about tax collection?”
“You don’t have to do anything but stay in this office. You’ll have a badge. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep my pistol in your desk.”
“I won’t shoot it.”
“Good,” Hooper said, with a little laugh. “It’s just for safety. And you don’t have to go on any raids you don’t care to.”
“I don’t care to go on any, particularly.” Mary Bet spat a blackberry seed that she’d been working free of her teeth, and she caught the wink her cousin gave her. “I haven’t even said I’ll do it, yet.” One day gave her no time to make such an important decision. But she realized there really was no decision; the sheriff wanted her to do this job and thought she was up to it, and, besides, there was no one other than Hooper Teague whose advice she would care to seek. Robert Gray Jr. was in Hartsoe City and wasn’t up on her daily life; her father, if she called him on the telephone, would only be confused and alarmed. She thought of Leon Thomas, but of course he would only say to do as her cousin recommended.