The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (49 page)

The wedding was at eleven. I spent the morning relaxing and sipping coffee and getting into my wedding suit, gowns being something I'd never been a fan of, seeing as they're fussy and expensive and
not even comfortable to sit down in. Still, was a lovely few hours, for it
was the first of my five weddings in which I hadn't misgivings beforehand, something I'd always made the mistake of attributing to nerves.
Around 10:30 my cage boy, Bailey, knocked; he was wearing a brown
suit that strained at the buttons, and his hair was slicked back over the
top of his head.

"Morning, Bailey," I said, to which he smiled and backed away
and proudly gestured at a car he'd gotten somewhere. I got in, and he
drove me to a community hall Art had rented downtown, Art's dream
of being married in a church having died when we found out how much
it cost to rent a church large enough to seat every workingman on the
Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. Instead we were being
married in a windowless cube of a building, with clapboard walls and a
flat roof, the words Polish Welders Association Hall splashed across
the front.

I was about to open my car door when Bailey barked, "I'll do it!"

I leaned back and smiled and said, "All right, Bailey. You just go
ahead." He turned the car off, staying put while it rocked and jiggled,
after which he hustled over to my side of the car as fast as he was able.
Beaming, he took my arm, and walked me to the front door of the hall,
where we stood waiting till we heard organ music, though in this case
it wasn't organ music but the groaning breathiness of a calliope.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"I am at that," I answered, after which we walked on in, causing
six hundred heads to turn. Jesus, I muttered under my breath, and if I'm
not mistaken I heard Bailey mutter something similiar, for each and
every one of those poor workingmen had somehow managed to get
himself into a jacket and tie. As I scanned the room, I saw jackets with
frayed lapels, with unravelled stitching, with buttons missing, with
stains as big as squirrels, with pockets torn clear off. I saw jackets straining over shoulders clearly too big, and I saw jackets draping off
shoulders way too spindly. I even saw nice jackets, for there was one
table with workingmen dressed in fine wool suits, meaning a men's
clothing store had probably been broken into the night before.

The other surprise was each and every attendee had cleaned himself up-those were polished foreheads giving me little nods of recognition, and those were clean hands giving me little waves, with clipped
nails and bandaged cuts besides. Many of them had had haircuts, and
the ones who hadn't had combed their hair, many of them pomading it
to one side. Far as I could tell, every last beard had been trimmed,
which is saying something seeing as how all workingmen wore beards.
I'll tell you it was a sight, all those smiles as I walked down that aisle,
showing teeth that, while not exactly white, had been baking powdered
to a state just this side of clean.

In other words: I was a touched Miss Mary Haynie from the
earthy part of Kentucky, and crying enjoyably because of it. Art was
waiting for me at the front of the room, and of course he wouldn't be
Art if he didn't have a surprise in store: his best man was none other
than a tiny little elephant we all called Baby. Seeing this, I laughed
through my hiccuping tears, the workingmen seated nearest the aisle
laughing along with me. When I reached Art he held my hand with the
one not holding on to Baby's leash.

With that, the ceremony started. The minister was Unitarian, and
as a result didn't wear a robe, just a normal everyday church-going
jacket. When he started in on the service I faded out, for I'd heard those
words-the ones starting with "Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered
here today" so many times I practically knew them by rote. To pass the
time, I let my mind wander and I started thinking about how absurd life
is, my being the only woman at my own wedding and marrying a man
most wouldn't describe as being particularly male and still my being
pleased about every last bit of it. I came back to the here and now
around the time the minister told Art it was ring time. Art whispered something to Baby, and Baby raised the tip of his trunk. It held a little
powder-blue box, which Art took and opened. I gulped. The ring was
emerald, and what's more I knew the reason why: I'd once mentioned
to Art the most beautiful colour on earth was the colour of Rajah's
eyes. By now I was really crying-try wanting something for your
entire adult life and finally getting it-so to a background of whimpers
and sniffles I heard that Art was to kiss the bride. A second later Art's
hands were on my waist and his lips were on my lips and his moustache
was tickling the underside of my nose and I was officially Mrs. Mabel
Rooney, Bridgeport, Connecticut.

At which time lunch was served.

Art had hired a bunch of local teenagers to tend to the food, and
they came out with bowls of potato salad, macaroni salad, ham slivers,
chicken pieces, turkey hocks, cheese cubes you name it, we served
it-and they set them on a series of buffet tables against one wall. Art
and I served ourselves first, after which we sat and ate and watched the
workingmen line up, not a hint of pushing or elbowing or name calling,
only a lot of smiling and jovial talk. With such orderliness it wasn't
long before they were all back in their seats, plates heaped high with
food, a plastic rose in front of every third man, and oh was it comical
watching them try to eat turkey hocks with cutlery instead of their bare
hands. Throughout, there wasn't any swearing or bawdy joke telling or
fights over who did or did not pass the salt. Prior to the big day, Art
and I had talked long and hard about whether we should give them
beer, our decision being we'd put enough for two each in big ice buckets
around the room. Turns out we needn't have. Not one workingman
had a beer. Most wouldn't even look in the direction of the tubs, sticking instead to the pitchers of water and iced tea on the tables. Was as
though they'd all gotten together and voted not to go near anything
containing even the smallest amount of liquor, which I later learned
was exactly what happened.

Mostly, it was what I call a nice sociable event, a lot of pleasant chatter without all the fussing, dust-ups and fornicating that tend to
come along with circus parties. Since we'd started first, Art and I finished eating before anyone else, so we went from table to table, thanking them all for coming, and I can tell you they were all a hundred times
more appreciative than any of the performers would've been. We'd
done a good thing, inviting those poor men. We just had. When we
were done our little tour, Art and I found ourselves standing by the
door to the Polish Welders Association Hall. Art looked at me, giving
me that Art grin.

"Well, Mrs. Rooney?"

"Well, Mr. Rooney?"

"I suppose we should go."

"Yes, I suppose we should."

He pushed open the door and we stepped outside. Was a coldness
to the air, but not a bad one, owing to the sun in the sky and the clearness of the day. The car Bailey had squired me in was parked outside,
the keys in the ignition and our packed bags in the rumble seat. Art
helped me into the car, and by the time he got in himself some of the
workingmen were coming out and making the first ruckus of the day,
though was a ruckus more along the lines of whooping and hollering
and wishing us a great honeymoon. We drove off, waving and feeling
like royalty. As we made our way through town, other drivers honked
when they saw the "Just Married" sign roped to the rear fender.
Pedestrians waved and a friendly cop, seeing the carnations glued to the
headlights, directed us around a broken water main.

Ten minutes later, Art was hoisting both our bags onto a train
that, believe it or not, didn't belong to John Ringling. As we sat and
waited for the train to leave, some of the workingmen showed up on
bicycles and began waving and being generally boisterous outside our
compartment window. A few turned cartwheels, and one made swimming motions in the air for no clear reason I could think of. We laughed
anyway and waved and generally felt light as feathers and eager for travel. After a few more minutes a whistle blew, and blew again, and the
train started to jostle, my not bothering to ask Art where we were going
because I knew under no circumstances would lie tell me.

Four days we were on that train. Normally when I travelled, I had a
hundred things on my mind-which tiger had a toenail problem and
which tiger was suffering from a churny stomach and which tiger was
balking on a rollover and which tiger was showing testiness during the
tunnel-in. With my mind so occupied, I often missed what went rolling
by my Pullman window, the fact the Ringling show travelled mostly at
night not helping. This time, with no tigers to worry about and my
mind eased by my new last name, I had a chance to take a good long
look at the countryside. In other words, I felt like I was seeing it for
both the thousandth time and the first.

Just outside the Connecticut state line, the train veered close to
Manhattan Island, close enough I could see office buildings and the
Brooklyn Bridge and, looming over them like a watch mother, the
Statue of Liberty. (Was always my opinion New York City was
crowded with tall buildings so that those arriving would see them and
be impressed and think, Jesus, what must go on in this country?) After
chugging through New Jersey, we travelled through the steel towns of
Pennsylvania, the industry of which impressed the part of me valuing
hard work above all. Next stop was Washington, the nation's capital and
regal because of it, Art and I having just enough time to get out on the
platform and eat a vendor frank and wish we could visit the government
buildings. We reboarded, and for the next long while there wasn't five
minutes in which the train was heading in a straight direction; was nothing but curves and inclines and declines, the train making a potpourri of
noises, from the locomotive straining up the side of a mountain to the
brakes rushing air to stop the train from hurtling down the other side to
the screech made when train wheels cornered on worn-out gauge. Every
once in a while, as I peered out the window, the forest would break, and I'd see a mountain peak and someone else would see it too and say,
"Look, there's Mt. Mitchell" or "Hey, whaddaya know-there's
Sassafras Mountain, will you get a load of the mist no wonder they call
them the Smokies."

Took us a full day and a half to get through Virginia, North
Carolina and Tennessee. We must've seen a hundred little logging
towns, the houses all made from wide-bore timber, smoke pouring out
of each and every stone chimney. On the station platforms, little white
children with close-cropped hair would try to sell us packets of sap
gum or homemade string-with-ball toys, waving at the train as it
pulled away to the next little mountain town. By the time the terrain
turned swampy, the trees dripping moss and the land cloaked in the
mystery poorness causes, I knew we were skirting the tops of Alabama
and Mississippi. Suddenly the children greeting us at each whistlestop
were black and so wanting for nourishment it made the back of my
throat ache: they were dressed in rags, and living in houses made from
tarpaper. In one town-I forget the name, Holly Springs maybe-Art
bought a bag of apples from a station vendor and started handing them
out, though he stopped when the older kids started pushing down the
younger ones to get more than their fair share.

The train picked up speed when we hit the wide-open spaces of
Arkansas and Oklahoma. And while I won't say those states are as
J
lovely to look at as other parts of the country, I will say there's an
impressiveness in the ability to remain unchanging. As we gazed out
our compartment window, watching all that scrub roll by, the eye got
drawn to simple things it wouldn't've noticed in the mountain states.
A lone homesteader shack, still in use. A cow getting branded. A vulture sitting lazily on a fence post, nothing around him for as far as the
eye could see. Funny how a little hill, one that would've looked no
bigger than a pimple in the Appalachian states, can be a source of fascination and meaning when it's all alone and surrounded by flat space.

During those two days or so, with nothing must-see on the far side of the window, Art and I did most of our talking-was a lot of
handholding and baby voices and blabbing about the future, till finally
I asked one of the many questions I had about the origins of Arthur J.
Rooney.

"Art, I want you to tell me something. Do you, or do you not,
have some Indian blood coursing through those veins of yours? If you
do, just tell me, because to my mind anyway it's nothing to be ashamed
of and I'd really just like to know."

He blinked several times, thinking, before providing his answer.

"Some," he said.

He didn't say anything for the next half-minute or so, which is a
long time for a pause in the middle of a conversation.

"My mother was Indian."

"And your daddy?"

Here Art took a deep breath.

"Peddled whisky on the reservations. Or at least I'm told he did.
I never knew him. My mother was his best customer. You can probably
guess how she paid him, considering I'm sitting here talking to you.
Since she was in no state to raise a little one, the other squaws mostly
banded together and took care of me. They say every man is a product
of his environment, and my environment included ten mothers, no
fathers and more confusion than is generally considered beneficial to
the welfare of children."

"When did you leave the reservation?"

"When they passed that damn Boarding School Act. I was ten
years old when they sent me to a white school. I didn't fit in with the
white kids there and I didn't fit in with the Indian kids there, so I mostly spent my time with the workhorses and with some stray dogs the
schoolmaster fed with scraps. Without the company of those animals, I
think I would've gone crazy. I suppose in a way I did, what with all the
fussing I did after I ran away. I did that when I was twelve, and I spent
the next five years doing whatever it took to keep an Indian boy alive on the streets, none of which I'm willing to talk about, for the appetites
dreamt up in some of those frontier towns are unfit for the ears of a good
woman like yourself. One day I hitched a ride into Laramie. I figured I'd
stay a few days, maybe a week. I ended up staying fifteen years."