The Promise (13 page)

Everybody was in their Sunday clothes. The women were corseted with brooches fastened to their collars. A fair number of the men had shaved their chins clean and trimmed their mustaches. Daddy had nearly outdone himself. He’d slicked back his wavy gray hair, wore a collar, and had polished his boots to a high shine. Mama looked pretty; she’d pinned up her hair with her tortoiseshell combs. Even the children looked Sunday good, the boys with their shirts tucked in and the little girls wearing ribbons. The ten St. Mary’s nuns were here – they admired Oscar, he was always doing for them – and so were the orphans, all ninety-three of them. Those children were easy to pick out. They were dressed alike wearing white on the top and black on the bottom, the girls in skirts and the boys in short pants, their black stockings held up by garters.

So many people, I thought. They’d come for Oscar and Mrs Williams, they’d come for the dancing. I pulled the bow, hardly touching the strings, trying to get the rust out of my fingers without making a sound.

The crowd in the pavilion got tighter around me. Any other time these folks were family and neighbors but tonight, with them all looking at me, I didn’t know nobody. They were just swirls of eyes. Maybe that was why Mrs Williams was frozed up good when she and Oscar first got to the pavilion, Andre dragging behind them with his bottom lip poked out. Their arrival had caused a stir; most everybody was curious about this woman from Ohio. They looked her over as Oscar made the ‘howdy do’s, the men tripping over themselves and the women smiling at her but not knowing what to say.

Mama, wanting to do right by Oscar, kept to Mrs Williams’ side and filled in the gaps. She told her that Bumps Ogden was Daddy’s brother, and that Mattie Anderson was her sister. She told her who baked the best cakes and who was known for her quilting abilities. I figured Mama was wasting her time thinking any of that mattered to Mrs Williams. She had a reared-back look on her face, her smile fixed like somebody had stepped on her foot and she was trying to act like it hadn’t hurt. The women mostly stood off a ways, taking note of the rows of lace on Mrs Williams’ shirtwaist and how it showed off the shape of her bosom. The women looked at the tips of her shoes, too. Them shoes were a soft kid, the color of butter, a color that would dirty real quick around here. I could have told the women something about them shoes that they couldn’t see. The buttons that ran from the anklebone to the top were also covered in kid.

Oscar saw to Mrs Williams, everybody noticed that, too. He squired her around the pavilion before taking her to one of the long planked tables propped up on sawhorses. He set her down with Mama, Kate Irvin, Aunt Mattie, and Daisy Calloum, then went off to the sand hills likely for a drop or two of whiskey before sitting down at the men’s table. When he left her, Mrs Williams drew into herself like she’d just been tossed into a barrel of winter rainwater.

She didn’t pay a bit of attention to Andre. It was me that made sure he was settled with the orphans at one of the children’s tables, him being friends with them. It was me that made sure he had food on his plate and not just slices of pie or cake. And when everybody was done eating, I made sure Andre’s mouth was wiped clean.

Now, holding my fiddle and sitting on the stool, I got my handkerchief out from the sleeve of my shirtwaist and wiped the chin pad. I was sweating bad. Frank T., that foolish brother of mine, hollered out, ‘Oscar? Where’s Oscar and that pretty little bride of his?’ The crowd gave way and there Oscar was, bringing Mrs Williams to the cleared dance floor close to where I sat. Her eyes went wide when she saw me, my fiddle likely coming as a surprise. Andre clung to his daddy, a fistful of Oscar’s pants in his hand. He looked like he was fixing to cry but there wasn’t nothing I could do about that because now folks were clapping. Oscar grinned, and Mrs Williams’ cheeks were pink, making her even prettier. Mama reached out, caught Andre by the arm and brought him back with her into the crowd. He buried his face into her skirt, and more than anything I wanted to put my fiddle down and hold him tight.

I touched the bow to the strings but my hand was unsteady and the strings screeched. Somebody laughed, it sounded like my cousin James Robert. Mrs Williams was in the middle of the empty dance floor with Oscar, and now the pink in her cheeks was gone, and she was ghost white. She gave me a begging look, and I guessed what she was thinking because I was thinking it too. All these people. Hurry up and play. Fill up this quiet.

I did the oddest thing then, I could hardly account for it. I nodded at Mrs Williams. It was the kind of thing I did when I played with Biff and Camp, us all nodding at the others, our way of saying, Yep, I’m ready to start. I don’t know why I did it, Mrs Williams wasn’t playing, but something made me do it, and I was glad I did. Her shoulders eased just a tad and the corners of her mouth lifted. She returned my nod, a slow bob of her chin. Without knowing why, a touch of calm took ahold of me.

I drew the bow again and this time I did it right. This time it was the first notes of ‘Sweet Evelina.’ Oscar, his smile gone now, bowed to Mrs Williams. She put one hand up on the broad crest of his shoulder and he took the other, swallowing it up inside of his. They stood straight as could be, her looking up at him, and him looking at her. I played on but them two were stuck, that spark shooting between them. Around them, people gave each other high-eyebrow looks. Mrs Williams whispered something and all at once, her and Oscar lurched into the waltz, their steps small. They stumbled but they kept with it, and I saw that Oscar was counting. One, two, three; one, two, three. His steps smoothed out. He gathered her up like he was sure of himself, his steps longer, almost gliding as they circled the floor.

Biff sang the refrain, shoring me up.

Oscar and Mrs Williams waltzed, his grin back and her close to smiling.

There were other folks on the floor now, and my playing evened out. So did my nerves. The waltz ended but I played on with Biff and Camp, our fiddles and mandolin going from one tune to the next. The candlelight from the lanterns that hung from nails on the support pillars made every woman pretty. The hollows and lines that came from hard work had eased into shadows. Folks stomped their feet to ‘Cotton-Eyed Joe,’ and they whooped when we shifted to ‘Bonnie Blue Flag.’ Mrs Williams’ lips tightened at that one, it being a Rebel tune, I figured, and her being a Yankee. Oscar wouldn’t let her sit it out, though. Him and her danced, sometimes together, other times her with the neighbor men.

Frank T. was one of those she danced with, him grinning like it didn’t matter a whit what Maggie Mandora thought, even though he was promised to her. Like a rooster, that brother of mine two-stepped Mrs Williams around the floor, not caring that she held herself back and away. He didn’t even see how she kept Oscar in her sights as Oscar danced with some of the women, including Mama. Oscar even got Sister Camillus to polka with him, her face nothing but a circle of pink surrounded by that starched white headdress of hers.

I didn’t know how those nuns stood them things bearing down on their foreheads and coming up to their chins. It was hot at the pavilion, all those people and all that dancing. But nobody seemed to mind. The old people sat at the tables, tapping toes. On the dance floor, the courting couples held fast to each other, and the ones that had been married a long time danced and smiled like they were newlyweds. The children danced, too, the girls snagging a few of the boys. Andre was in the middle of all that dancing, grinning wide like he had forgotten about his daddy’s new wife, him chasing a few of the orphan boys, them chasing him back, all of them slipping and sometimes spilling off of the pavilion floor and out onto the sand.

Me and Biff and Camp went from the polka to ‘Arkansas Traveler’. That set Sister Finbar and Sister Evangelist jigging like they weren’t weighed down in black dresses and them belts of beads with silver crosses hanging at the ends.

It was a refreshing sight, the nuns dancing as everybody clapped time for them, somebody letting out a whoop now and again, all worries set to the side. Biff pushed the jig faster, and I stayed with him, sweat running down my face. The nuns kept up too, their circled faces red, those silver crosses flashing and their black shoes nothing but blurs of toe-to-heel jigging.

Oscar and Mrs Williams were part of the crowd watching the nuns. She didn’t clap like everybody else; that wasn’t something she seemed to know how to do. Instead, she tapped her fingers against her dark blue skirt keeping time like she couldn’t help herself. The music had caught hold of her. And Oscar, he didn’t hold back. He clapped and the size of his grin was something I hadn’t seen since before Bernadette took sick. Just that quick, my bow stopped and my fingers on the neck of the fiddle went still. Oscar had forgotten all about her, I thought. Everybody here had forgotten Bernadette.

Camp shot me a questioning look and I caught up with him and Biff, finishing up the jig, the two nuns breathing hard and near to collapse. We played ‘Buffalo Gals’ and then it was time for ‘Sweet Evelina’, the waltz that had started the dance. This time it said something different. It told everybody that if they hadn’t danced with their sweethearts, they best do it now: the night was wearing down.

Over at the long tables, children laid stretched out on benches, their eyes slits as they tried to keep them open. Near them, babies slept in baskets on the floor. The married folks danced, the women letting their husbands press them close. Frank T. danced with Maggie, him trying to pull her to him but her putting up a little fight. Likely she was thinking about how he’d made a fool of himself with Mrs Williams. Wiley paired off with April Burnett, a woman he admired, not that he could come out and say it, him being shy due to those kicked-out teeth of his. Daddy, a little tipsy from drink, waltzed Mama around the floor.

It was Oscar and Mrs Williams that stood out. He took her in slow sweeps, a noticeable amount of air between them but both so fixed on the other that I had to turn my head. This ache high up in my chest had nothing to do with Oscar, I told myself, my bow moving slow across the strings. It was because of the boys I had been promised to, Oakley Hill and Joe Pete Conley. They had been cut short, and that had cut me short too, and I missed them both but Oakley most of all.

The last note drifted away, swallowed up by the whispering surf. A kind of clumsiness came over the dancers as they broke apart, the swell of the music still in their blood but the planked floor flat under their feet. In hushed whispers, the women packed up the empty platters and the cake dishes and put them in baskets. The men went off to the sand hills likely to kick sand over the whiskey bottles, not wanting wives and mothers to know how much they’d drunk. The nuns made the orphans stand in lines of ten so they could count heads, and when they left, it made a sizable hole in the crowd. I wrapped my fiddle in the old pillowcase that I used for such. ‘You did just fine,’ Biff told me. Camp said, ‘Surely did.’ I was still pinking up from that when Oscar came by, a lit cigarette going, and me pulling in that good smell. He took my hand and said, ‘You outshined the boys by a mile.’

It turned me airy, those fingers of his closing over mine. It was just me and Oscar Williams, our hands together. Them green eyes of his, I thought. They carried me to a place I didn’t ever want to leave.

He let go of my hand. There was a coin in my palm. I stared at that coin, warm from his hand but cold and hard all the same. It made me want to say, ‘It ain’t money I’m needing. It ain’t,’ but he had moved on, shaking Biff’s and Camp’s hands just like he’d done mine, likely palming coins. Wages, that was what this was.

Across the pavilion, Mama looked at me. I righted myself, and that was when I saw Mrs Williams. She was by one of the tables where Andre laid on a bench, flat on his belly, an arm dangling over the side. She eyed me, her head tilted like she had just got wind of a secret and was puzzled by it, trying to make the jagged pieces fit. She looked over at Oscar. He was saying something to Camp. She turned back to me and when she did, her face was shadowed up with green.

I didn’t need sunlight to see that or to sort out what was behind it. I could guess what she was thinking. Mrs Williams believed something laid between me and her husband.

It weren’t so. I held her gaze and willed her to hear what I was thinking: I ain’t that kind of woman, don’t you go that way. And Oscar ain’t that kind of man. You should know that about him; you shouldn’t need me to tell you.

Her shoulders slumped. A tiredness came over her. It wasn’t me she was looking at, not now. Mrs Williams was fixed on my wrapped-up fiddle, pressed to my bosom. Yesterday she told me that she performed at concerts. Saying that had made her puff up with pride. But tonight, she wasn’t the one that had played in front of folks. It was me.

Oscar went over to her, the cigarette smoke trailing behind him. I put his coin in my skirt pocket. Other folks came up to me saying, ‘You did good,’ and, ‘You added something pretty,’ and, ‘You did the family proud.’ Frank T. left with Maggie, aiming to see her home, I figured. Wiley was gone too, and so was April Burnett. Across the way, Mama and Daddy waited. Daddy inclined his head at me, his way of saying, Hurry up, girl, don’t have all night. At the table, Oscar stooped and pried Andre from the bench. He gathered that child up like he was a bag of shifting oats, hoisting him to his shoulder. Andre’s arms went around his daddy’s neck. Oscar said something and Mrs Williams got the lantern that was on the table.