The Girl from Charnelle (12 page)

S
he didn't go straight home. How could she? Her father would be expecting her soon. But she couldn't go back in that house, talk to him, not even the smallest exchange of words. Not yet. He'd know, wouldn't he? She walked north to the railroad tracks. There was a train that ran from Amarillo, up through Dalhart, and on to Denver. Outside, it had cooled, but not too much, and there was plenty of light from the three-quarter moon and the stars. She walked along the tracks and stopped where they crossed a trestle, the Waskalanti Creek running below. Not much water now, even after all the snow had melted, just a thin stream with rocks, sharp and jagged, glinting in the moonlight. She walked out over the bridge, as she and Manny and Gloria used to do before Gloria got married. She sat on the rail and dangled her legs over the side. Then she leaned back between the rails on the wooden ties and looked at the dark sky overhead. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

She wished there was someone she could talk to. She thought of Gloria,
still in West Germany, her last letter said. She might be coming home this summer for a visit. Their father wanted her to. He had forgiven her now, wanted her to come back. He wanted to see his grandchildren. There was another child now besides Julie—a boy, Carroll. Maybe Gloria would understand. But Laura couldn't tell her. She could tell no one. She'd promised. And she didn't know what Gloria would say. Her husband was older than she was, not that much younger than John, in fact, but it was different, and Laura wondered how much Gloria had changed. Now that she was married and had kids, would she be less understanding, feel she had to protect Laura, as if she'd never been young before? Gloria might even tell their father. Even though Laura wanted to tell someone, in order to make it real, it wasn't worth it, and yes, John was right, it was far too risky. He could go to jail, he said. Though did anyone
really
believe that?

She heard the howl of a coyote. It seemed to be far off, but it startled her. She knew that the coyotes wouldn't bother her, that they weren't really so dangerous, except when they ran in packs. But they made her nervous anyway. There had been an incident once in Charnelle where a coyote grabbed a baby, tried to carry it off but was stopped, the baby unhurt except for a nip mark on its foot, and the rabies shots later. That howl made her think of what happened to their dog Greta.

Lying on the trestle, her eyes still tightly closed, she tried to remember what her mother looked like that day. She wore a pale blue smock that was stained from dirt and blood, and her ash blond hair, laced with silver strands, was pulled back in a scraggly bun that had come loose from all the commotion, long strands falling like scythes down the sides of her face. Her mother sat there on that stump so long, just staring, thinking, waiting, that hard and silent beauty of hers. Then not much later, she left, toting that ragged brown suitcase to the bus station and away from them. No explanation, no letter, no postcard. Nothing. Just gone. Disappeared.

Where was her mother now? Laura hadn't thought seriously about her in so long. Strange, how you get used to it. For the whole first year after she left, Laura could never imagine
not
thinking about her mother.
Where was she now? Did she still think of them? Was she coming back? Was she dead?
All those impossible questions. Her mother maybe in some strange man's room, doing what Laura had done tonight—more, certainly. She could see that now, the possibility of it. She understood that her mother was not just her mother, was not just her father's wife. Did her mother have another
child? Enough time had elapsed, and she was still young enough. But wasn't it children, wasn't it them, that she'd run away from?

Laura rolled over on the track and felt the splintery wood against her face. She looked between the ties and could see the thin creek below her, hear it gurgling softly. The white rocks hard, pointy, but shimmering in the moonlight. If she tried, she might be able to fit between these ties. She used to be able to. But she wasn't skinny enough anymore. She'd fleshed out; her breasts and hips would get in the way now. She could toss herself over. It seemed pretty easy, really. You just had to have the nerve to do it, or the stupidity. A boy a year older than Gloria, Danny Lincoln, had done it a few years ago, broken his neck and went into a coma, and he died a week later. Why had he done it? Manny figured he was drunk, but no one else did. His girlfriend had dumped him. It had always puzzled Laura, but right here, right now, in the dark, the water below, she could see how it might happen. She could feel in her own blood the pull, like that one time at Palo Duro Canyon, standing on the edge, that crazy voice inside her head that whispered
jump, jump, jump
.

Headlights shone far away and then suddenly closer and closer. She moved quickly to the end of the bridge. She didn't want to be caught on the tracks over the water; there was an ordinance against it, ever since Danny Lincoln fell—or jumped.

The car stopped, and a man stepped out. She couldn't tell who it was, because the car lights were in her eyes. She looked to her left and right, saw an opening where she might run. He came closer, a flashlight in his hands.

“Laura?” It was Jimmy Cransburgh. “Laura Tate?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What are you doing out here?” he asked, approaching slowly, the flashlight on her face.

“Just walking home.”

“From where?”

She paused for a moment, unsure how to answer. “Baby-sitting.”

“Baby-sitting who?”

“The Letig boys.”

“Kind of out of the way, aren't you?”

He was right. Her house was east of the Letigs' house, not north. She had gone a good mile out of the way.

“Just wanted to walk,” she said.

“Were you on the bridge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You know there's a law against that?”

“No, sir,” she said.
Plead ignorance rather than guilt,
Manny always advocated.

Mr. Cransburgh didn't answer for the longest time, just shone his flashlight over the bridge and then into the trickle of water below and then back to her face. She couldn't move, felt frozen, her head throbbing with panic.

“Why don't you let me drive you home?”

She put her hand out against the light so she could see. It took her a second to find her voice. “I can walk.”

“I think you better let me drive you home,” he said and shut off the light. “Come on. Hop in.”

 

In the car, she wondered if he could tell what she'd done. He didn't say anything. But why would he? When they were almost to her house, she asked if he'd let her out at the end of her street.

“I should drop you off at your house.”

“No, that's okay.”

He glanced at her in his rearview and then nodded. “Listen,” he said lightly. “Why don't we just not say anything about this to your father?”

She exhaled, suddenly relieved. “Thank you, Mr. Cransburgh.”

He stopped at the corner.

“Stay away from the bridge, you hear?”

“Yes, sir.”

She thanked him and closed the door, and he stayed parked there as she walked down the street to her front porch, and then he drove past her house.

Manny was gone. Gene and Rich were asleep. Her father was reading in his chair. He wore his flannel pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt, and his reading glasses were perched on the end of his nose. He was thinking about opening up his own welding shop, and he'd checked out library books, now scattered over the coffee table, on how to run a small business.

“You're back late,” he said, looking at her over the black rims of his glasses. “I didn't hear you put your bike away.”

“I decided to walk,” she said. “It was pretty out. Mr. Letig's going to bring it over tomorrow.”

“Everything go okay?” he asked, a worried crinkle in his forehead.

“Yes, sir.”

“You're shaking.”

He was right. She was shaking. She hadn't realized it. She crossed her arms and rubbed her hands over her shoulders. “It's a little cold.”

“Seems warm to me. You feeling okay?”

“I'm just tired.”

He pushed his glasses up. “Listen to this,” he said and thumbed back through his book.

“I'm really tired, Dad,” she said.

He held his hand out. “Come here and let me see if you have a fever.”

“I'm fine,” she said, stepping around him. “I just want to go to bed.”

“Well, okay, then,” he said, shrugging. “See you in the morning.”

“G'night,” she said.

“Love you,” he said by rote, his head already back in his book.

A
month passed without her seeing the Letig family. It was a busy month. Spring break was over, and the rush and daily chores of school and home left the weeks short on leisure. Classes were behind because of the winter snows, the principal said, so the students had to attend school three successive Saturdays so that the summer break would not be compromised. At Easter, Laura's family visited Aunt Velma near Amarillo, as usual, but Velma was not in good health, and Laura felt irritable and distracted while she was on the farm for the long weekend.

Aunt Velma had suffered a small stroke, which had put her in the hospital for a week. She was home now, insistent on doing her work, but there was a slur to her speech, a cobweb of spittle at the corners of her mouth, and she limped slightly. Her arms twitched oddly, and vases and other fragile items were endangered and had to be moved. Aunt Velma had somehow managed to cook a huge meal for them (fried chicken, potato salad, cucumbers in a sour cream sauce), but there were no trips into Amarillo, no movies
at the Paladian Theater, no nothing. Everybody just stuck on the farm.

Women from the church had been staying at the house, caring for Velma, but Mr. Tate said they wouldn't be needed while he and the kids were there, and he assumed, as usual, that Laura would just do the work. She was enlisted to help her aunt with her baths, to escort her to the toilet. She resented these tasks. Aunt Velma didn't really want the help, though she needed it. Laura wanted the old Aunt Velma back. This woman seemed like a frail, weathered, half-addled version of herself.

Part of Laura's irritation had to do with the woman's body. Aunt Velma liked to wear long work dresses or long-sleeved shirts, so her skin had never been that exposed. It shocked Laura to see her naked in the bathroom. Her skin was the color of cottage cheese, with a curdled texture and bruises (from falling) of varying shades—purple, blue, yellowish green. Never a skinny woman, she'd always been thick but robust. Now she seemed fat, and in her nakedness the exposed wrinkles and wattled flesh turned Laura's lips down and made her squint. Velma's gray hair floating in the tub of water, the unhealthy folds of flesh…Laura tried to look away, but the image stayed as a negative in her mind. She could taste the sneer on her lips, and she did not like this in herself. It felt sad and unseemly and at times sickening in a way that made her lose her appetite.

It wasn't her aunt's fault, she knew. She loved Aunt Velma, she did, but she grew weary, just in their short stay here, of having to remind herself of that fact. The whole farm seemed to be indicative of Velma's age, ill health, and inattention. Gray sheets of paint over the barn were splintering. Everywhere she turned, it smelled like manure—dog crap, cow crap, chicken crap, pig crap. Inside the house, it didn't smell much better. She was used to Aunt Velma's house exuding a freshly baked cobbler or fried okra smell. Now it reeked of Mentholatum. Dust, like a layer of sheep's wool, clung to the furniture, and she kept pulling, in frantic swipes, spiderwebs from her face. Even the beds and couches and chairs seemed to be full of dust. She tossed her copy of
Julius Caesar
onto the living room couch, and a cloud rose above it.

She helped her aunt and kept her mouth shut. But her father told her twice, “Quit that frowning. She can't help it.”

At one point, Aunt Velma slipped in the tub and pulled Laura in with her. Both of them screamed, and her father and Manny were suddenly there, opening the door, and helping Laura out of the water. The sight of the naked woman, her breasts sagging and chewed-looking, the folds of fat, the frail
ugliness exposed to her father and brother, made Laura turn away in an angry spasm of embarrassment. Once her father saw the situation, he dismissed her brother, but not before Manny's face contorted in disgust, and he looked at Laura as if she were to blame, not just for the fall but for this moment of shameful exposure. She had the fierce, sudden impulse to slap him. As if this was what a woman was. As if this was what it all amounted to.

She can't help it, you idiot,
she wanted to spit.

And so, alone, in a room upstairs, or downstairs in the wooden rocker, which didn't seem to be a breeding ground for dust and dirt, she found herself alternately angry, contemplative, ashamed, and sleepy. She tried to do her homework—a geology report and geometry worksheets and reading the interminable
Julius Caesar,
which had a good enough plot, but half the time she didn't know what in the world they were saying. She tried to read it aloud as Mrs. McFarland had instructed them to do—
ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum, ta-dum
—but she lost all track of the meaning when she did that. And soon enough she would be staring out the window, wishing she were back in Charnelle, sitting with Marlene and Debbie at their favorite table on the far end of the school cafeteria at lunch, or making fun of Dean Compson with them at 4-D's, or walking with an excited dread down the Letigs' street on her way to school, hoping she might catch a glimpse of him leaving in his pickup.

 

She had been trying to decide whether she ever wanted to see John Letig again. That Saturday night, several weeks ago, after she got home from his house and the trestle, she started to go to bed, but her two younger brothers were in the room, and all she could smell on herself was him, that pungent, smoky smell. She touched her stomach, and she could still feel him there like a scar. She grabbed fresh underwear and a nightgown, darted to the bathroom, and scrubbed herself in soapy water. Rinsing afterward, she resolved that this was it; it wasn't worth it. She'd had her little thrill, and so had he, but that was it. No real damage had been done, nobody knew, nothing terrible had happened. She'd kissed other boys anyway, and felt them against her at dances, and this wasn't
that
different. If it stopped now, then everything would be all right. Besides, what had happened at his house that night spooked her. She had tried to slow him down, to stop him, but she hadn't, and she wasn't sure she wanted to. She wasn't sure of anything. It all felt too out of control.
Be done
with him.
She could almost hear Gloria say those words. And what if her father found out, or Manny, who seemed to suspect her of everything? It could be terrible. She remembered how angry her father was when Gloria eloped with Jerome. It was good they were both out of the country by the time he found out, or he would have gone after Jerome; he was that enraged.

She'd been working over this problem for weeks. The Monday after spring break she was glad to be back at school, where her friends were, and where she could be the unassuming girl she'd been a week and a half before, nonchalant with the boys—ordinary, really. But by midweek she began thinking of him again. In geology, as they were making a topography map out of oatmeal paste, she closed her eyes for just a second and felt again the sensation of being lifted in the dark, his heavy presence on top of her, her anxious excitement. Other times she would close her eyes and would see him with a sash of snow on his shoulder, or licking the droplets of beer off his blond mustache, or the way, when she had asked him what he wanted to eat, he smiled and said—not in a lurid manner, there was something openly lovely about his expression—“Whatever you're making.” But then she would forget him again, and the thought of them together seemed foreign, more like an incoherent dream than a memory, and her own yearning felt remote, like it belonged to someone else.

And so the weeks between spring break and Easter had gone like that, back and forth between what she felt she ought to do and what she, well…felt.

Here at the farm, in the musty sickness of Aunt Velma's house, she had wanted to drift back to those memories, but suddenly everything associated with the body seemed ugly and bruised, dusty and foul-smelling. And the old woman's body struck Laura as a contorted image of her own, a malignant trick with a fractured mirror.

Best to be done with it.
And she finally started to believe it. Under the covers at night, she drifted off to sleep with the self-satisfaction of a sinner determined to sin no more. And the next day it was as if what had happened with John hadn't happened. She didn't even think about it.

 

On Easter Sunday, Aunt Velma didn't feel well enough to go to church, which was a relief to everyone, though no one said so. Mr. Tate said they needed to be getting back to Charnelle. He arranged for one of Velma's neighbors to
check on the farm, and he called the woman from church to tell her they were leaving soon and that Aunt Velma needed someone to look in on her.

That morning, before breakfast, Laura found an old photograph album, the exposed binding lined in dust. She wiped it with a cloth and flipped through it. Her family didn't own a camera. Strangely, they had no family pictures. The only one she remembered was the framed one of her parents' wedding day, and her mother had taken that. Aunt Velma came in, sat down beside her, and began to narrate the story of the pictures. There were Velma and Uncle Unser, not long before he died, with his scissored hands. There were Velma's old mother and father, not long before they died. Uncle Unser's brother and his wife.

In the middle of the book, there was a stunning photograph of a couple standing by a large expanse of water. Laura didn't recognize them. A handsome young man, smiling, wearing one of those full-bodied men's bathing suits, his hair slicked back, a pencil-thin mustache like Clark Gable's. His skin pale but muscled. Beside him was a beautiful, dark-haired woman in a long, body-hugging swim dress, her figure as shapely as old
Life
photos of Lana Turner or Betty Grable. The woman's head was thrown back in high-spirited laughter.

“Who's that?” Laura asked.

Aunt Velma peered at the photograph, rolled her tongue around as if she had something mealy in her mouth that she wasn't sure she liked.

“Hmmm. Who is that?” she echoed and ran her hand shakily over the photograph, rested her crooked index finger on the man's body. She laughed suddenly. “Oh, yes, that's Unser and me. Ha! Right before we got married. In Mobile. No, no, no. Corpus Christi. Imagine that.”

“Really,” Laura said, surprised, taking the photograph from her. She studied it. Yes, she could see them buried deeply inside the faces, though not the bodies, of those people. It was bewildering.

“You were beautiful,” Laura breathed and handed back the photograph. She wondered if that was the right thing to say. It seemed faintly like an accusation.
And now look what you've become!
Wasn't that the implication? But how to correct it? Best to say nothing more.

Aunt Velma just held the photograph close to her eyes again for a long time. She ran her fingers lovingly over the man's body and then the woman's, and shook her head and smiled to herself. Laura felt that Velma was remembering a private moment. It was as if Laura wasn't even there.