The Girl from Charnelle (10 page)

Then the plates and silverware began to clatter as they all helped themselves. The food was delicious. Laura hadn't realized how hungry she was, or how the events of the day had made her ravenous. She ate two heaping platefuls and had a huge piece of cobbler, and afterward, lying on the floor near the unlit fireplace, a pillow under her head, her eyes closed, she listened to the radio—the
Hollywood Star Gazer
and then a special Good Friday musical special featuring the New York City Boys' Choir—as her brothers and parents and Aunt Velma sang and chattered and played Chinese checkers around her. She felt sated and pleasantly warm, a tingly buzz on her skin. Truly relaxed and well for the first time in months.

It seemed as if the fall from the horse had shaken whatever was bad or festering out of her, that those few minutes of deadness had made way for this sense of pleasure she now felt. She smiled to think of what Aunt Velma would make of this. In fact, she wondered if she was starting to think like Aunt Velma. She wouldn't say anything to Manny—he'd just make fun of her—or to anyone for that matter. It was just a fleeting thought, anyway, but maybe that's how people like Aunt Velma find themselves, through these odd connected moments, ripened with mystery, like beads on a string—leaving town, falling off a horse, brooding over the dead, eating until you're stuffed—and
poof!—
through some magical alchemy, you're crazy for Jesus.

“Good night, Laura,” her mother said.

She opened her eyes as her mother draped a blanket over her. The windows were dark, and no one else was in the room. Her mother had let her hair down from its bun, and it fell softly around her face, so that she looked beautiful, very much like Gloria, the small network of creases around her eyes and across her forehead smoothed into youth by the dark.

“What time is it?”

“Late,” her mother said and leaned over and kissed her. Laura could faintly smell the familiar blossomy scent of the lotion she applied to her neck and hands and face each night.

“I love you,” Laura whispered.

“I love you, too.” Her mother rose, her long white nightgown billowing like a shroud, and Laura watched her disappear into the darkness of the kitchen and then listened for the pressure of her feet over Aunt Velma's slick but creaky hardwood.

 

Saturday afternoon Mr. Tate took them all to see
The Ten Commandments,
a special event since they had never, as a family, been to an indoor movie theater before. Several times each summer, especially before Rich was born, they all went to the Charnelle Drive-in. Mr. Tate would park the truck with the bed facing the screen, and they'd sit on cushions in the back, Manny lying atop the cab, Gloria down front in the grassy area with her girlfriends or later in some beat-up jalopy with another girl and two pimply-faced boys. A sweaty jug of iced lemonade and a huge paper bag full of buttered popcorn (which they'd spent the afternoon popping at home) were wedged beside the wheel hump. Laura's father would clamp the speakers to each side of the truck and turn the volume up high, even though it wasn't necessary, because the sound from the two hundred other speakers in the drive-in could easily be heard. But that was okay with Laura. She loved how strange it seemed, almost dreamlike, hearing the same private conversation being carried on simultaneously all around her while the film flickered on the monstrous, bug-spattered screen. It was both communal and intimate—the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the collective smacking and munching and swallowing, the stars twinkling overhead like a Hollywood effect. If the movie was boring, she would look around or head off to the bathroom. Sometimes she would spy couples kissing in cars and trucks, ponytails smashed against the windows, and other vehicles parked way in the back, windows fogged over, rocking slightly. It often seemed to her like permissible eavesdropping, a public display of secrets.

The Paladian Theater in Amarillo, however, possessed its own special exoticism. It had just opened its doors, and Mr. Tate wanted to see a movie there because he had supervised a portion of the construction the previous fall. They arrived a good half hour before the film began, bought their tickets, and Mr. Tate spoke to and laughed with the manager like they were old friends and then gave them all a tour of the theater, which seemed as thrillingly majestic as an English palace with its tall, red crushed-velvet curtains, and the gold-and-black rococo curlicues on the facing of the balcony, and the screen towering impressively above them, protected and veiled rather than exposed, like the drive-in screen, to the elements and insects and beer-swigging vandalism of adolescent boys.

Dressed sharply in a white shirt, jeans, and boots, Mr. Tate strode about the empty theater as if he owned it, pointing to the inlaid design of the balcony, explaining the joist work of the three pillars and steel-framed balcony support that he himself had welded, rattling off the cost of the seats and the curtains
and the screen, which indicated (Laura couldn't quite tell from her father's tone) either magnanimous wealth or a waste of money. At his insistence, Manny, Gene, and Laura clambered up the carpeted spiral stairs to the balcony and leaned over the ledge, waving down to Rich, who stood smiling like a Munchkin before the massive screen.

They took their seats as other people filed in. Mr. Tate gave Manny and Laura three dollars and told them—in a clownish, mock-hick voice that made everybody laugh—to “oversee the movie vittles.” They bought lemonade for their parents, Velma, and Rich and root beer for themselves and Gene, a brick of Hershey's chocolate for everybody to share, as well as two big bags of popcorn, which tasted oilier than their own, scooped from the reservoir of orange-yellow fluff.

The glass-covered lightbulbs dimmed. The red curtain parted as the music from the first short, a Disney cartoon, trumpeted. Unlike at the drive-in, the sound here was not too loud, but it was clear, the picture sharp, brighter, without the crackles and lines and burn holes she had learned to ignore on the outdoor screen.

A trailer for a John Wayne western and then a newsreel, and then the movie itself. It had not come to Charnelle when it was originally released, so Laura was excited to finally see it. She hadn't quite known what to expect—a Technicolor sermon?—but soon she was enthralled by the grand panoramic majesty of it all. It made her want to read the Bible. Who knew it was that romantic, that dramatic?

When they had arrived in early afternoon, it had been hot and cloudless, but when they emerged from the theater over four hours later, the sun had slipped beneath the horizon. The sidewalk and grass glistened with rain, the sky milky purple, as swollen and variegated as a two-day bruise. Laura felt disoriented. It was like falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon and waking in the night, not sure what had happened or even what day it was. Time seemed to evaporate or be kidnapped. She didn't know if she liked this feeling—thick, narcotic, as palpable as an overripe melon.

Aunt Velma loved the movie, though she thought it a little racy for kids. Rich had fallen asleep. Manny loved the fights and the special effects, and Gene's favorite part was when Moses seemed to be walking around in a burning-bush-induced glaze, his face red, his hair suddenly white. Mr. Tate thought it was way too long and had twice stepped outside to smoke a cigarette. Mrs. Tate liked the Exodus—the joy on all those people's faces when they finally left Egypt.

“What did you think, Laura?” Aunt Velma asked.

“I loved it.”

“And your favorite part?”

“All of it,” she said, but she felt her answer disappointed everyone. They had given specifics, but she still felt too stunned by the experience to talk about it.

 

Easter Sunday. They rose before dawn and went to the sunrise service at Aunt Velma's church, where the preacher recounted the old familiar story of the Crucifixion, the days of darkness, the stone mysteriously moved from the tomb, Jesus appearing to the women who loved Him and then later to His disciples who needed testing, a hand in the side of His body, and the final glorious ascension—hallelujah, hallelujah, amen.

Laura listened absently. She'd heard this story many times, and while on Friday, during Aunt Velma's dinner blessing, it had seemed vividly alive, it now had lost its power to hold her attention. It seemed, in fact, hackneyed compared to the movie they'd watched yesterday. She bent her head, as if in prayer, closed her eyes, and tried to unfurl the movie in her mind. The most distinct images weren't the ones she would have thought—the Red Sea parting, Pharaoh's army stopped by the pillar of fire. She saw instead the more intimate moments: The princess playing that crazy game, called hounds and jackals, with the pharaoh. (It stunned her to think of biblical figures playing board games like she and Gloria and her brothers did.) The gold dress “spun from the beards of shellfish.” Moses in chains in the dungeon, the princess prostrate before him. The dark shine of his sweaty body, half naked and caked in mud, in the immaculate throne room before his father, who turned away from him, who forbade the name of Moses to be mentioned again. Yul Brynner with that black snake of hair coiled exotically out of the side of his bald head.

Everyone suddenly stood and shuffled the hymnals. She opened her eyes and stood up, too, out of habit, and pretended to sing, “He arose, He arose, He arose,” while a bright flicker of shame goosed over her because she'd been thinking about the movie, particularly Moses's sweat-glistened chest, instead of being thankful for Jesus dying to take away her sins.

 

After church they rode Ginger and Hayworth again, played several matches of horseshoes, and then Mr. Tate took them fishing at the pond, but no one caught anything, except Gene, who nabbed a little white perch. Aunt Velma, Mrs. Tate, and Laura made the dinner, and everyone played dominoes and canasta,
ate more cobbler, and then listened to a special Easter radio program from the Grand Ole Opry.

After cleaning the kitchen, Laura's mother wiped her hands and said, “I'm taking Fay for a walk.”

Gene said, “I want to go.” Both Manny and Laura looked on expectantly, like they, too, could use a walk before the trip home.

“No, you stay here,” she said, and was out the screen door before anyone could answer.

“Aw, come on,” Gene said, moving toward the door.

Aunt Velma caught his arm. “You come sit with me, honey.”

“But I want to go.”

“Come sit here in this chair with me. Let your mother have a little time to herself.”

 

By eight, Laura's mother still hadn't returned. Mr. Tate, Manny, and Gene were loading the truck for the return trip. Laura helped Aunt Velma dry the last of the dishes and wrap the leftovers they were taking back to Charnelle.

Mr. Tate came in and asked, “Where's your mother?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, go find her and tell her it's time to go.”

She dried her hands, put on her sweater, and walked across the dark meadow, calling for her mother and Fay. She walked to the orchard where the light from the barn crept to the edge of the trees, but she didn't go into the grove, not at night. She heard rustling off in the branched shadows. She called again. A flurry of indistinct movement, and then some animal—a coyote, maybe—scrambled out of the grove. She sucked in her breath and backpedaled quickly, thinking the animal was charging toward her. But when she glanced again, she saw it lope in the opposite direction, as afraid as she was, moonlight skittering across the edge of its neck and head. It disappeared over a hill.

She felt apprehensive, jumpy, so she walked swiftly, calling again. The evening had cooled; her breath misted in front of her. A twig snapped, and she broke into a run toward the faint light of the barn, where the chickens chastised her as she entered. Ingrid, the Holstein, mooed loudly, and in the midst of this animal chorus, she felt suddenly ridiculous. She laughed nervously and then heard the familiar wheezing of a dog, and said, “Fay? Mom?”

The one-bulb light of the barn was creepy. From the hay-strewn corner,
Fay emerged surprisingly, as if passing through a watery membrane separating darkness from light, and walked up to Laura and licked her hand. She bent down and rubbed the dog's chin, and Fay immediately lay down on her back and exposed her belly for more scratching.

“Where's Momma?” she asked the dog, who closed her eyes and lifted her paws. Laura peered into the darkness and could vaguely make out a still, human shape. A quick, shuddering dread whipped through her.

“Momma, is that you?”

“Yes.”

Laura walked toward her and could see her sitting against a bale of hay. Why hadn't she answered her calls or said anything? She wondered how long her mother had been here. Had her mother watched her running into the barn? It frightened Laura, this strange silence. In the shadows, her mother's cheeks shimmered, shiny and wet.

“Are you okay?” Laura asked.

Her mother didn't answer.

“Momma, are you okay?”

“Yes, Laura.”

“Why are you crying?”

“I didn't realize it'd gotten so late. Is it time to go?” She wiped her face with her sleeve, then rose and walked into the light.

“You're bleeding!” Laura shouted.

Her mother's yellow blouse was ripped below her left ribs. A blot of darkened blood encircled the ragged hole. Laura reached out and touched the stain.