The Girl from Charnelle (34 page)

“Yes.” He looked at her strangely. “I am,” she assured him.

“Are you all right?”

She nodded.

“Okay, then.”

He kissed her on the forehead and then went over to his bags and opened one of them and sifted through it. He was all business. She lay on the pallet and watched him and then looked out the window, which was growing gray with the fading light. She felt very sad. She turned her head into the pillow and breathed deeply.

After a few minutes, she sat up and said, “John.” She wasn't sure what she wanted to say. He was busy buckling something in the corner. They were going to take the pallet and the little table with them. It was their only furniture, and he didn't want to leave it here since he had no idea when or if they were coming back. He'd also purchased a large black trunk that could be locked and would protect most of their things from rain or other bad weather during the drive.

“What is it?” he asked, still busy, his back to her.

She rose and went to him, stood behind him while he finished latching the trunk, and then gestured toward the pallet.

“We can't. We don't have time.”

“Please,” she implored him.

“Laura—”

“Hold me, then.”

“Okay,” he said and stood and pulled her into his chest. “Are you okay with this?” he asked. When she didn't answer, he said, “Because we're on that train now. It's pulling out of the station. You better tell me now.”

“I know.”

They stood there, still, for a few minutes. This is all she wanted, a moment of stillness before the rest happened.

“You with me?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” He kissed the top of her head. “I've got to get home now. Willie's got an earache.”

She winced.

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Let's go.”

 

That night she didn't sleep at all. She listened to the house as it creaked and groaned, to her brothers breathing, their light snores, and to the breeze as it moved coolly through the window, billowing the thin curtains. She stared at the statue of the bird.

She thought about her mother, what she must have been thinking the night before she left. Did she have doubts, too? Did she feel this oscillation between a glassy-eyed nostalgia and hardened will? She must have thought for a long time about what she would do. Who knows how long? But maybe not. Maybe the possibility presented itself in a flash of intuition on that particular day. And rather than wait for the inspired moment to pass, she seized it and was gone before she could change her mind, the action carrying its own momentum.

Finally dawn arrived. While Manny and Gene were doing their morning chores, Laura stuffed her bag with a few more clothes, the statue, her diary, and her money, which she had hidden in her bottom drawer.

She scrambled eggs and made bacon and pancakes for them all. Her mother, she suddenly remembered, had made them a big breakfast,
too—blueberry waffles and ham and eggs—a final meal. Laura cooked willingly, and they were all surprised to come into the kitchen and see the table set with plates of eggs, bacon, and pancakes as well as cups of orange juice, milk, and coffee.

“My, oh, my!” her father exclaimed, and kissed her on the forehead.

She couldn't eat, but she sat down and watched them, knowing that this would be the last time she saw any of them for a long while—years, maybe, possibly never again. She felt the emotion rise in her. She had to stop these thoughts. She couldn't let herself go to this place. Not today. She washed the dishes, and then she hurried Rich along, took him over to Mrs. Ambling's house and was back in time to see her father and Gene and Manny leave.

Manny asked, “Do you want a ride to school?”

“No,” she said. “I'll take my bike.”

“Suit yourself.”

Then they were off, her father's truck and Manny's car moving down the street and then out of sight. She was left alone in the house. She listened to the radio for half an hour as she walked through each room one last time. And then she went out into the backyard and whistled for Fay. The dog limped over, turned onto her back so she could have her stomach scratched. Laura obliged her. She rose, and Fay rose, too, and licked Laura and nuzzled her legs until Laura told her, “Enough.” Then she held the dog's face in her hands.

“Good-bye,” she said. Fay was the only one she could actually say it to before she left.

She went inside and washed her hands. She grabbed her bag and school satchel, which had been emptied of books and filled with the last few things she was taking, and then she set off down the alley toward the abandoned warehouse.

 

She was supposed to meet him there at nine-thirty.

She arrived at nine-fifteen.

By nine forty-five, she began to worry.

And then, by ten-fifteen, she was sure he was not coming at all.

At eleven-thirty, she walked home quickly, the bag and her satchel heavy on her shoulders.

 

The house felt eerie and silent. She thought she'd never see it again, or at least not for years, so it seemed as if a long time had passed. She waited until noon before she picked up the phone and called the Letig house, but there was no answer. She hung up, dialed again, and let it ring twenty times. No one picked up.

Where is he?

As she put the phone down, she heard Fay barking. She looked out the window. John stood at the back gate. He seemed exhausted, his hair mussed, his long-sleeved plaid shirt untucked on one side from his jeans, his chin and cheeks unshaven.

“Hush up, Fay,” she called and then went outside and quieted her.

Laura pointed toward the house, and John quickly crossed the yard and went into the kitchen. She told Fay to hush up again and then followed him in.

“Where were you?” she blurted out. She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. “I waited for more than two hours.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “Willie's ear got so bad we had to take him to the hospital. He's been screaming and crying all night long. They had to drain it. He's still there. I just got away for a few minutes.”

“What are we going to do?”

He was clearly irritated by her question. “I don't know. We can't do anything right now. He's in the
hospital
!”

She didn't say anything, just turned away from him to the sink.

“What do you want me to do? I can't leave like this. I feel like enough of a shitheel without doing that to them. For Christ's sake, no one abandons his kid when he's in the hospital.”

“No,” she whispered. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” she said, nodding. She turned to him. “You should go back.”

He sighed heavily and pursed his lips. “I'll call you tomorrow,” he said.

“Okay.”

“We'll work it out.”

“Yeah.”

“I gotta go.”

She nodded. “I know.”

There was a short pause, and she wondered if he would at least hug her or perhaps reach out and touch her, but he just opened the door, and Fay began barking crazily. He stuck his head back in.

“Can you keep the dog quiet?”

She called Fay to the house. The dog came slowly and hobbled up the steps and into the kitchen. “Go on,” she said to him.

“I'll call you tomorrow.”

She nodded, and they stared at each other for a moment, and she felt as if more should be said, as if something would die between them if more was not said.

Then he left, walking with his head down, and when he was out of sight, and she heard his truck come to life and roll away, she let out a long sigh. Something that had been wound tight in her body suddenly released. It had been crazy to believe that he could ever do it, that he would ever be
able
to do it. She had sensed that something might happen to prevent it. She had even half hoped that something would stop them. And now that it had, she felt strangely relieved.

Y
es, it had been foolish, their plan. Over the next five weeks, they agreed that there was no way it could have worked. Willie's sickness had been a sign. It would all be easier in a year or two, much easier, John told her. Laura knew, however, that it would never happen. It would never be like Galveston. She still fantasized about it sometimes, but she realized it could never be the way she had imagined. There would be too much hostility, too much opposition and upheaval. His boys would hate him, hate her. His wife—who knew what she would do? And her father? She couldn't even think about his reaction. It wouldn't work, and she resigned herself to that.

She also tried to savor what they still had together, because she knew it had to change into something else, and she was afraid, too, of the way it would change.

Things were already different. When John picked her up on election night, she tried to make small talk as they drove to the barn. She told him
what she was studying—a novella by Herman Melville called
Bartleby the Scrivener
(all that preferring not to—a definite No), sines and cosines, the Lincoln-Douglas debates—but he just nodded his head absently, feigned interest. She knew he was bored. At the barn, they drank some Nehis, listened to the radio. He smoked a few cigarettes, and then they took off their clothes. She felt strangely sad, though, and maybe he did, too, because he could not keep an erection long enough to put on the condom, and he finally just rolled over and put his arm over his eyes. She lay against him, but he nudged her away.

“Let me sleep a little,” he said.

She put on her shirt and stared out the window as the light faded to different hues of black. Even with the kerosene lamp, the inside of the barn seemed very dark when she turned around.

“John,” she whispered. “John, wake up.”

“Just let me rest a few minutes more.”

She finished dressing and waited silently by the window for a while, and then she knelt by the pallet, noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the deepening worry lines at the corners of his mouth.

 

At eight-thirty, she woke him so they could drive to the Armory, where people from Charnelle Steel and the town were meeting to watch the election results. She had told her father that she was going to a football scrimmage and then the library and would catch a ride to the Armory to watch the results with him, as part of her homework for history class. Her father seemed delighted.

John dropped her off about a block from the Armory. He drove on, parked, and went in. By the time she got there, he was eating a sandwich, drinking a beer, and talking to some men who were shooting pool.

Her father was perched at the bar in front of the television, drinking a beer himself. Walter Cronkite was shuffling papers.

“Who's winning?” she asked.

“Too close to call yet,” her father said. “A nail-biter.”

There was half a cheeseburger and some french fries left on his plate.

“Can I have that?” she asked. “I'm starving.”

“Sure, go ahead. Hey, Luke, can you heat this up for my daughter?”

“That's okay, Dad. This is fine.”

“Nonsense. It's cold. Hey, Luke.”

“Yeah.”

“Will you put this back on the grill for a minute? My girl is hungry. And give her a root beer, would ya?”

“Sure thing,” Luke said.

“Thanks,” she said.

As she ate and sipped her root beer, she watched John in the mirror over the bar. He shot pool with Beaver Mitchell and the Cransburgh brothers, concentrating on his shots but then laughing and cracking jokes, attempting impossible behind-the-back shots to the oohs and aahs of the men. Showing off, it seemed. For her? Maybe. Though perhaps this is how he was at work, with the men he knew. Every once in a while he would glance over to see if she was looking at him, but there was no special sense of urgency. There'd be no secret kissing behind the Armory. Neither of them was up for it. Tonight she was simply Zeeke Tate's teenage daughter, the baby-sitter.

She wanted to go home, but her father was determined to stay until the end, even though it was a weeknight. The election was too close to call. The popular vote seemed neck and neck, though Kennedy had a slight lead in the electoral college. Her father stayed glued to the television, even though the reporters said the election might not be settled until the morning. He called Mrs. Ambling, arranged for the boys to spend the night at her house.

At a quarter to ten, John grabbed his coat and announced, “I gotta get home.”

Beaver Mitchell bellowed, “The old ball and chain calling, Letig?” The few men and women still at the bar laughed, including her father.

“You got it,” he said, smiling. Laura grimaced at his response.

“Can you give me a ride home?” she blurted out suddenly, hopping off the stool, grabbing her coat.

“I don't know.” John shot her a look that said,
What are you doing?
“I suppose so,” he said calmly.

“Now, wait a minute,” her father said, his hands up, his voice suddenly gruff. “You're not going anywhere, little lady.”

John's eyes darted nervously back and forth between her and her father. She felt panicky for a moment, wondering why her father would protest. She'd pushed their luck. How ironic would that be—after all that they'd gotten away with, to be caught like this?

“Who's been lecturing me for two months now about the American
dream?” he said loudly, wrapping his arm tightly around her shoulders. She looked at John to gauge his reaction. He just grinned at her father, put on his coat and his hat. “Well, here's the American dream in action, honey,” her father continued, pointing to the television set propped on the end of the bar. “And we're gonna see it through to the bitter end.”

John shook her father's hand, tipped his hat to her, and then lifted up his collar and started for the door. She wanted him to turn back around, but he didn't. She could see his silhouette on the porch, where he hesitated before heading down the steps, maybe a little drunk. Who could blame him for hesitating? she thought. Going home to his wife. The ball and chain.

 

A little after eleven—after almost everyone in the Armory had left except for Laura and her father, the Cransburgh brothers, and Luke—the vice president and Mrs. Nixon finally appeared at campaign headquarters.

Nixon said that “if the present trend continues, Senator Kennedy will be the next president of the United States.”

The crowd at his headquarters started chanting, “We want Nixon! We want Nixon!”

But Nixon just smiled and held up his hand. He thanked them for their support and was gracious, more gracious than he had seemed throughout the campaign, her father said.

“Look at that old phony, plastic smile,” Luke said. “You know he's torn up inside.”

Wiping the froth of beer from his upper lip, Jimmy Cransburgh said, “Serves the bastard right.”

Even though, like her family, she had been rooting for Kennedy and Johnson, and she thought maybe her father was correct about Nixon, that he was a dirty fighter, she couldn't help but feel sorry for him again. She kept watching Mrs. Nixon standing by his side—stoic, grim, trying to smile, the cords in her neck tight. Mrs. Nixon's face seemed like it was about to crack open.

Up on the screen, the election results were posted. Still very close, and she wondered if Nixon felt he'd made a mistake, conceded too early. On the television screen was a photograph of Kennedy and Johnson holding their hands up high in victory. The screen switched to Nixon's headquarters. No one there. Balloons littered the empty floor.

Her father laughed. “The aftermath,” he said. “You lose and the party's over quickly.”

“Yep, everyone disappears fast,” Luke said.

She was depressed, just wanted to be in her bed, asleep. She said, “Can we go now?”

“We gotta hear Kennedy's victory speech,” her father said happily and ordered another beer from Luke. “Why do you look so glum, sweetheart? We won!” He propped his elbow on the counter and leaned toward her, touching his forehead to hers. “Aren't you happy?”

“I guess so,” she said.

“What do you mean, ‘I guess so'?”

“I feel sorry for Nixon.”

“Ha!” Her father laughed and then called down to the end of the bar, “Jimmy, Luke, Bob, did you hear that? She feels sorry for Dick Nixon.”

“You're a softy, sweetheart,” Luke said.

“Yep,” her father said and grabbed her hand. “Just an old softy.” He kissed her hand. “Somebody's gotta lose, honey. Politics isn't about who's nice or whose feelings get hurt.”

“I know,” she said. “But that doesn't mean I have to like it.”

 

Her father woke her right before two o'clock. She had gone to lie down on the old couch behind the Armory bar just after midnight. This was the second time he'd woken her with an update. The first was about some controversy with the Illinois primary. She had nodded her head and fallen back to sleep.

“It's gotten closer,” her father said now, animated, sitting by her.

His eyes were glassy, and she didn't know if it was because of lack of sleep or because of the beers he'd been swigging.

“Kennedy won't give his speech until he hears personally from Nixon. They say it may be morning now before we know for sure.”

“Okay,” she answered, and then he was back at the bar with Luke and Jimmy. She kept dozing in and out of weird, groggy dreams. She and Senator Kennedy were at the barn, lying on the pallet together, she with her arm over her face. She couldn't stop sweating. She asked Kennedy, who wore a green cardigan sweater, if she could rest a few more minutes, just a few more minutes. Standing at the window, staring at them, Mrs. Kennedy
wore bright orange pedal pushers and her riding boots and an orange cap, her hands resting on her pregnant stomach.

Her father woke her again and said that Kennedy was about to speak. Her back felt sore, her head ached, and her clothes reeked of cigar and cigarette smoke. She staggered to the bar and climbed up on a bar stool. Luke pushed a stack of warm pancakes and syrup and a glass of tomato juice her way.

A tired but grinning Senator Kennedy appeared and praised Nixon for being a good citizen. He assured the nation that the vice president would continue to serve the country in an important capacity but declared that this victory symbolized a new generation of leadership and a new hope. He then put his arm around his young, pregnant wife, who looked tired but smiled benignly, and said he needed to go now, “to prepare for a new administration and a new baby.” The reporters chuckled.

Kennedy's simple speech momentarily lifted Laura's spirits. She watched the Kennedys leave the podium, his hand touching his wife's back. The way things should be, she thought. She poured the syrup over her pancakes and took a bite and thought again of the Nixons. She still couldn't shake the image of Mrs. Nixon from her mind, standing by her husband's side.
Bereft
. It must have been a bitter night for her, Laura thought, for them both. More bitter days to come.