Fair and Tender Ladies (26 page)

Anyway since it seemed to be such a big deal to Beulah, I left Joli at home with Tessie Porter and went to the Fourth of July picnic even though I had no real interest in it, I would of liked just one day to rest up and play with Joli. But I went, to please Curtis and Beulah.

I wore Beulah's white dress with cap sleeves and red polka dots and a red patent leather belt, and white high-heel sandals.
I thought we were supposed to look so good in green, with our red hair,
I said just to tease Beulah, but now Beulah says we look good in red! Beulah reads all the magazines, she keeps right up with fashion.

Joli waved her little hand bye-bye when we left. She is real smart I think she is smarter than Curtis Junior.

So Beulah and me and Curtis set off down the hill, all dressed up, and I must say the company had gone all out! The celebration took place in the bottom, on the baseball field, and they had stretched red, white, and blue bunting from here to yonder, and had two bands playing, and flags flying, and watermelon and ice cream and I dont know what all, and folks so dressed up you couldnt hardly tell who they were. The same folks I see every day in the store, I mean, now wearing their finest.

But you can tell the miners no matter what, from the black rings around their eyes like a possum. This is from coaldust. You cant wash it off. Oakley has got it too. It looks almost like makeup, as if he is a movie star, a shiek of Araby! And you notice it most particularly on Oakley who is so light complected otherwise, with those light brown eyes. I kept looking for him at the Fourth of July but I couldnt see him anyplace. A whole bunch of people were gathered around a truckbed, listening to a speech by a man in a bluestriped suit that Big Curtis said was famous. You could tell how proud Curtis was that the company men nodded to him, and spoke, and that he wore a tie, like they did. The miners wore open-neck shirts for the most part. It was hot, and getting hotter.
Let us pledge anew in the words of Mister Wilson,
the famous man said,
to make the world safe for democracy!
And everybody cheered. The famous man was sweating up a storm. But then when Mr. Ransom, the company superintendent, got up on the truckbed to make
his
speech, some men started whistling and he couldnt talk until some other men came and walked them into the woods. It was supposed to be no liquor there, but you could tell that a lot were drinking.

I was getting real hot and wishing I had put my hair up, and wishing I had brought Joli anyway, in spite of Beulah. I was too hot to eat a thing except one deviled egg. Finally I wandered off down the creek a ways while the rest of them were eating.

Nobody was around. I could hear bees buzzing, birds chirping, the faraway sound of the band. I was so hot I took off my shoes and went wading, even though the water in Diamond Creek is black as night because they wash the coal in it upstream. The water was shiny and cold and black. It felt so
good,
Ethel, and it struck me, this was the first time I had been by myself since Joli was born. So I sat down there on a big flat warm rock with my feet in the dark rushing water and kind of laid back and let the water run over my hands, too, and I might even of slept for a while when I heard somebody say,
Hello there!

I looked up and saw a man in white pants and a striped shirt and a tie, the best looking man you can immagine! At first I thought I was dreaming. I couldnt see him too good for the sun in my eyes. So I sat up real fast but he said, Oh no, stay right there, you look so comfortable, and so I did. And he sat down on the rock beside me, real close.

You're Ivy Rowe,
he said.

I felt a chill at that moment, in spite of the heat.

How do you know that? I said.

I came in the store Monday, he said, and saw you, and asked around and found out who you are. You had on a blue dress, he said, which was true. He leaned down real close over my face, grinning. He has very white teeth and dark eyes with the longest eyelashes ever, and perfect slicked-back black hair. He smells too good for a man.

Is that a fact, I said. I felt short of breath and couldnt think of much to say.

I've been looking for you, he said. I only came to this thing because they said you would be here. He took my wet hand in his hand and held it. His hand was the soft white hand of a man who has never worked in his life. He wears a gold wristwatch.

You seem mighty sure of yourself, I said, snatching my hand away. I dont even know who you are.

He laughed and leaned closer and brushed my cheek with his lips. You will, he said. I flicked some water in his face and laughed while he sat up and wiped it off with a clean handkerchief. I didn't care if I got him wet or not.

I like that, he said, grinning. I like my horses and my girls to have some spirit—which made me so mad that I leaned way over and splashed black water all over him and got his white pants dirty. Then I got up and ran off through the woods laughing, with him hollering curses after me. I didnt care either.

I ran home wet as could be but the breeze had nearabout dried me off by the time I made it back up the hill. My feet were killing me from running on the red-dog road, which is what you call a road made of the cinders left when a gob pile burns out. That's what the company makes roads but of. If Tessie Porter thought I looked funny when I got home, she never said a word about it, and Joli held out her little arms the minute she saw me.

So I watched the fireworks the way I wanted to in the first place, Ethel, sitting on the front porch holding Joli on my lap, and I bet it was the finest place in Diamond Va. to watch them from. They'd shoot up from the dark bottom, up and up and up the mountain side, and then burst open against the night sky so pretty you'd have to catch your breath. Little John Arthur came out and sat on his blanket—that blanket he carries everyplace—by my feet, and Joli never cried once. She laughed, though. She thought the fireworks were funny. I thought they were so beautiful. Pale green shining shooting sparks against the black, then red pinwheels, then pink, and then a shower of gold. I sat right there and watched them. I think the night air in summer smells so sweet, anyway. I like to sit out. Joli went to sleep in my arms and I carried her in the house and put her down. After the fireworks were over, a great cheer went up, and then you could hear car horns and glass breaking someplace, and somebody yelling. It was clear there'd be some fighting, that night. So I stood on the porch as bye and bye everybody came back up Company Hill, and lights went on, and you could hear kids crying and people arguing and carrying on, and music welling up all around so it seemed, from these dark close houses right up to the dark night sky.

Next door, Rush Gayheart started fiddling The Devil's Dream. He never says much, Rush, just fiddles and frowns a lot. Beulah and Curtis don't like him. They don't like Violet either. Curtis and Beulah think they are too good for the Gayhearts, but if they dont watch out, they will get too good for everybody if you ask me. That night, Curtis had stayed to play poker with some company men, so I reckon he was in hog heaven, but after while Beulah came marching up the hill by herself, fit to be tied.

Ivy!
she hollered, and when I answered
Yes
real quiet from practically under her nose, she jumped a foot.

Hush or you will wake up John Arthur, I said, for I had made him up a pallet on the porch. Dont you remember how much we liked to sleep out on the porch of a summer evening? I asked Beulah, and she said Yes, and then burst into tears.

Well Beulah, whatever is the matter? I got up and hugged her and made her sit down on the step with me.

Oh everything! Her words came tumbling out like Diamond Creek running down the mountain over rocks.
Everything.
I try my best to get away from Sugar Fork and I never can it seems like, it's not fair, I've always got something like
that
right next door to remind me. I knew she meant Rush fiddling. I knew she was thinking of Revel and Daddy, like I was. Oh I want to
leave
here, she said. I want to go up in the world so bad, I want oh I want—but here, she broke down in crying. So I held her head and kind of rocked her, and then she said, Ivy, I am going to have another baby.

No! I said.

Yes! she said. And I have done everything I know to do, but nothing worked.

What do you mean, nothing worked? I asked.

I mean like a coca-cola douch or taking Milk of Magnesia, she said, and I said, Dont even tell me.

Dont tell Curtis, Beulah said. Then she flung something out in the yard—I couldn't see what, in the dark, and started crying again.

There's your shoes! she said.

Where? I was so surprised.

Out there, you dont care anyway, you left them at the creek, she said. You dont care about a thing but yourself. You are so selfish, she said. She cried awhile longer. Then she said, Ivy, dont you know who that was, down at the creek today? Dont you care? That was
Franklin Ransom,
that's who, the superintendent's son, he's just visiting here now. Curtis said he's been asking everybody who you are, and where you live, and finally somebody told him to ask Curtis, and Curtis told him. So see what a chance you had? and to throw it all away like that, like you always do—I cant stand it, Beulah said. It's like you get everything in the world on a silver platter, and then you throw it down in the mud.

How did you get those shoes? I asked her, and finally she said that she was in the store with Curtis, after the fireworks, when Franklin Ransom came in with them, and said to give them to me along with his kindest regards. You could tell he was mad, she said.

Then Beulah grabbed my arm so hard that her fingernails almost drew blood. Listen here, she said. This is one chance you will not throw away. Oh if I was you . . . if I was educated like you . . . if I'd had the chances you have—well, if he does come back, if he comes up here again, you be nice to him, you hear me?

So Ethel, that started it.

Of course he came back and took me riding in his car, and then riding again, and then out to the picture show. Big Curtis and Beulah are tickled to death.

And in the meantime, two funny things have happened. One is that Tessie, who never says
one word,
came up to me the other day and said Missy—this is what she calls me—Missy, I just want you to know, that boy is
no good.
What boy? I said, but Tessie was skittering off by then like a waterbug down the hill, scared to death.
You knows which one,
she hollered back over her shoulder.

And the other thing is that Oakley has pitched a fit. You know he is always so nice and so easy-going, Ethel—you know how Oakley is. But he came over here Tuesday after he saw me out riding with Franklin Ransom, who has a blue Ford car, and busted right into the kitchen where I was washing my hair in the sink, wearing some old wrapper of Momma's.

Ivy! he yelled, and pulled me up by the hair so hard that it hurt, and I stood there dripping water on Beulah's floor. It's real bad to waste water because you have to haul it up from the pump yourself, so naturally I got mad at Oakley.

What's this about Franklin Ransom? he said. His whole face was black, he'd come straight from the mine.

None of your business, I said. I was about to cry because I had soap in my eyes, and Oakley was acting so high-handed.

You're my girl, Oakley said, and I said right back, I am not!

The hell you aint,
he said, and pulled me over to him and kissed me. Now this was the
first time
he has kissed me since we were kids, Ethel. So you know I am not his girl. It made me so mad I pushed him, and he slipped down on the wet floor, and pulled me down with him. Right then Joli came toddling in and started laughing and I started laughing too. She thought we were all playing.

Oh come on, Oakley, I said, You are my best old friend, now dont be crazy. But he wouldn't laugh with me or even smile. He just stomped off, kicking the screen door on his way out, leaving me and Joli sliding around in the floor.

And Oakley has not been by here, or said one word to me since! He knows when I am working down at the store, and he walks by the soda-fountain sometimes but does not speak, he is so childish. How Oakley Fox thought for even one minute that I was his girl is beyond me! I am not anybody's girl, Ethel. And I know Oakley and me will be friends again one day.

But now Franklin has asked me to come up to his parents house for dinner, and Beulah is all excited. You would think it was her, not me. She says it is about time I made a good thing out of a man. She acts like I am an old maid not a girl of 19. But poor Beulah, she is pregnant again and not herself. I have not got the heart to tell her that Mr. and Mrs. Ransom are in New York City right now. So I know what will happen if I go up there. What would you do, if you was me? Well, on second thought, I know what you would do. You would do exactly what you wanted to! But I have Joli to take care of now, and I am beholden as well as ruint. I will let you know what happens.

And in the meantime, what about Victor?

Can you and Stoney do anything?

I remain your worried sister,

 

IVY ROWE.