Follow Me (6 page)

Georgie never asked her to leave and never complained to her about staying there. Swill hardly came by at all. He’d wait to
see the boy when Georgie dropped him off at his house for his wife to babysit. Weeks had passed, and Sally had only heard
of the woman who was Swill’s wife and Steven’s grandmother — she never seemed to leave her own house. But Uncle Mason stopped
by to visit Sally most mornings, and Sally found herself looking forward to the company. He wouldn’t say much. He’d usually
bring his pipe, and he’d spend a long time tamping the tobacco. Often, he wouldn’t even bother to light it.

All summer long, Sally Werner stayed at Georgie’s house. At the beginning of September, little Stevie started school. Nights
turned colder, and the chirping of the crickets grew weaker. Sally would have liked a second blanket, but she didn’t bother
to ask because she guessed that Georgie didn’t have an extra to spare. And then one morning early in October she woke up from
a restless sleep. Noticing a different quality of light in the room, she lifted the blind and saw snow on the ground — a light
dusting shining like glitter inside the bottle of a winter scene.

I’ve b-b-been thinking,” Uncle Mason said later that day, chewing on his pipe.

Sally rocked fast in the chair on the porch. She had on an old wool jacket Georgie had lent her, though the snow had already
melted, and the sun was saturating the earth with a velvety warmth.

“Now hear m-me out.” Uncle Mason leaned back against the porch rail, drawing creaks from it as he shifted his weight. He stared
off at something over Sally’s right shoulder and stayed quiet for so long that Sally thought he’d forgotten what he’d been
wanting to say. And then it came out all at once: He had a home that n-n-needed tending. Sally didn’t have a home to g-g-go
to. She couldn’t stay there with Georgie. Why, then, d-d-didn’t she come stay with Mason for a while?

“You,” she began in shock, trying to gather words in response to the offense. “You…”

“Me?”

If he thought she would, if he wanted…

“I d-d-don’t understand.”

“Are you asking me to marry you?”

At this, the old man nearly collapsed in a fit of laughter. “Oh!” he cried, holding his belly, reminding Sally of her father
when he was measuring the effects of a good meal. “Oh!” he howled, overcome with amusement. “Oh, good Lord. Oh, girlie. Oh,
oh, oh!” He moaned in glee. He had to take off his glasses and wipe tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard. He had to
sit down, he was laughing so hard. He was laughing so hard that Sally began to feel offended.

“Is it that funny?”

“Oh, g-g-girlie, no, yes, I d-d-don’t know. I n-n-need a housekeeper.” And then, through his chuckles, he murmured, “Unless
you w-want to marry me?”

“Of course not!” she said. “I can’t believe you’d come up with that crazy notion! Why, that’s just cockeyed!”

What a cockeyed world she’d stepped into, she thought. A cockeyed family, a cockeyed hamlet on a meager river, a cockeyed
old salamander of a man who dared to imagine that a seventeen-year-old girl would want to be his wife. The sky was too low
and the ground was too high. No wonder everything kept slipping, glasses were dropped, and nothing made sense. And yet how
odd it was to feel a growing commitment, as though just by choosing to remain there she would acquire a permanence, with roots
growing from her feet into the porch.

“I’m going to take a bath,” she said, using the same familiar kind of announcement she would have used at home with her own
family. It was strange, she thought, how this old man was starting to seem familiar to her, how strangeness itself was becoming
ordinary, how she was beginning to imagine that she could fit in here, she could belong.

“I’ll b-b-be seeing you,” he called after she’d gone inside. She was heading down the hall to her room when she heard him
say, “Think about wh-what I’m offering. I p-p-pay a good wage.”

She hesitated, then turned around. She intended to tell him okay, she’d think about his offer, and it sure was kind of him
to be concerned about her situation. But he was already gone.

This was rural Pennsylvania in the fall of 1947 — a world of mud, sickly elms, stubbled hayfields, and backyard industries.
The Tuskee was even dirtier then than now, or at least polluted in a different way, with a film of soot coating the surface
and cement dust ending up as sludge along the banks. In the village where Georgie and her relatives lived, Fishkill Notch,
the creek from the spring on Thistle Mountain met the Fishkill Creek. With the headwaters pouring in from the upper slopes,
the water in Fishkill Notch spread into a deeper channel that on maps is marked as the start of the Tuskee River.

Hidden between its marshy banks, the river didn’t draw attention to itself as it ran through the village. Anglers cast their
lines there, but mostly the river flowed on without being noticed by the residents, and without noticing them.

Georgie’s house was on a side road off of Main Street. Mason’s house, though, was perched on a mound of land close to the
wedge where the Fishkill bends into the Tuskee. In the spring and fall and after heavy rains, the sound of the river would
make Sally Werner think that a storm was blowing in and wind was pouring through the trees. Years later, when she heard static
on the radio or the TV, she’d think of Mason’s house and the Tuskee rushing past.

She spent one more night at Georgie’s. When Georgie came home from work, she brought a casserole that Swill’s wife had made.
She already knew about Uncle Mason’s proposal and agreed that it was a good idea, promising Sally that they’d get together
every weekend. She’d heard they were building a new movie theater over in the next town. She was planning to take Stevie to
the Saturday matinees, and she hoped Sally would come along with them.

They ate supper, and Georgie put the boy to bed, ran a bath for herself, and called good night. Sally, who was ready to be
forthright, asked if they could talk. Georgie came into the living room immediately, as though she’d been standing just around
the corner waiting for the invitation.

The two young women stayed up most of the night, sharing Georgie’s cigarettes, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, their
knees drawn up under their nighties, their bare toes tucked between the creases of the cushions. Sally listened to Georgie
talk about Steven Jackson, her fiancé, and the plans they had had. The wedding never happened, she explained, because Steve
never made it home from the war and never got to meet his son, who came three weeks early and emerged like a king, bright
blue from the squeeze of the cord around his neck. The doctor had taken it upon himself to pronounce the boy damaged for life.
But he turned out to be just fine.

“He’s better than just fine,” Sally said.

“And your little one? Tell me about him.”

So Sally told Georgie everything, beginning with the ride on Daniel Werner’s motorcycle and the uncertain weeks that followed,
her flat belly growing rounder, her prayers to God unheeded, the scorn of her relatives and neighbors, the birth of her son
in the same bed where her mother had given birth to her, and ending with the day she ran away from home.

“It must have been something, leaving your baby behind like that,” Georgie said finally. “I can’t nearly imagine.”

“It was” — Sally searched for a word — “unspeakable.” It struck her as soon as she said it that she’d chosen the wrong word.
But she couldn’t think of another word that would do.

Georgie knew better than to say
you poor girl
to Sally. But her sad eyes conveyed her pity, and this time Sally didn’t mind.

“Won’t they ever come looking for you?” Georgie asked.

I’m as good as dead, Sally wanted to say. I’m a squashed bug. I’m a fish floating belly up. I’m curdled milk. I’m a rotten
apple. I’m — she searched for one more comparison — the girl in the moon, even as she said one word aloud. “No.”

“And you don’t ever want to see your baby again?”

“Of course I do. But he won’t ever want to see me.”

“That’s not right.”

“He’s a Werner. I tell you, if you’re a Werner you don’t know how to forgive. Every mistake is given a number and carved in
stone. That’s the stone they put as your grave marker.”

“I can’t imagine. All the women I’ve talked to over the years, all the stories I’ve heard tell… I’ve never heard a story like
yours, Sally Werner. You’ve sure been through it. I knew when I saw you you’d been through something. But now you just stick
around here for a while, and you can figure out how to manage.”

Sure, she’d stick around. Just to be in a place where she could say what she’d been through, to talk about it all… she’d felt
comforted by the sound of her voice as she’d spoken of her unspeakable troubles. The conversation was like a light that went
off gradually, fading from bright to a soft darkness over several hours.

It was long after midnight when she lay down on the bed in Georgie’s spare room. For the first time in months, she began feeling
hopeful. Georgie’s sympathy had given her an idea, just a vague one, but enough to build on. She’d keep house for old Mason
Jackson, who’d promised her a good wage, and somehow she would learn to manage. She’d do more than manage. With the money
she earned, she’d have the freedom to choose how to live the rest of her life.

D
AUGHTER OF SATAN
! Babylon’s whore! You foul embodiment of human filth! I tell you to kneel and pray for forgiveness. But
there is no forgiveness. You are here, forever here, under my command. Now scrub the toilet! Sweep the porch! Milk the cows!
Slaughter the pig! Pave the road! Brick the chimney! Raise the barn. Burn it down, and raise it again. Burn it down! Raise
it again. Burn it down, down, down…

Burn what down? Her reeling thoughts were stuck on the cows that needed milking. Those cows with their full udders. Where
were the cows? Uncle Mason didn’t have cows. He didn’t even have a barn. Or did he have a barn hidden somewhere in the house?
Were the cows in the house?

Hurry, hurry, there was work to do. If she fell behind with one task, then she’d fall behind with everything. The cows? Where
were the cows?

Running, running, running, to find the barn with the cows. But the hallway was endless, and every door was locked. Running,
running, running, the sensation of slime latching onto the back of her leg, and —

Dear Lord in heaven —

It was only a dream.

Only. In reality, Uncle Mason would never have spoken to her like that.

Good morning to me.

Get up, lazybones. Get up and do something.

But there was nothing that needed doing.

Sunday morning, snow falling soundlessly into the shallow river, the house full of the good smell of frying bacon. Uncle Mason
was rattling around the kitchen, making breakfast. Sally sat up in bed and pressed her hands against her face to feel the
warmth left over from sleep.

Life waiting to be lived.

G-g-girlie. Was she up?

She’d be out in a minute. She had to get dressed.

Her breakfast was ready, a breakfast of eggs and bacon and buttered biscuits piled on a plate for Sally to find when she came
into the kitchen. She’d dressed herself in the sweater and skirt Georgie had packed in a duffel for her. The sweater was the
color of the deep red of a peach close to the pit and made of a wool almost as fine as cashmere, and the skirt was navy, a
stiff corduroy hanging at knee length — a modern cut, if not exactly stylish.

Ten days had passed since she’d arrived at Uncle Mason’s. In those ten days, it was all Sally could do to give the impression
that she was useful. A house so sparsely furnished and pristine, with simple, functional chairs and tables and gleaming wood
floors, hardly needed a housekeeper, and there were times when she kept herself busy by sweeping a room she’d already swept
clean.

Uncle Mason had worked for thirty-five years at the cement factory. But his real love was wood, and he’d made all his own
furniture — the chairs and tables, the lamp stands and chests and bedposts. He’d even built a model of a three-mast whaling
ship, the
Charles P. Morgan,
which graced the mantel. He’d made most everything except an old Gabler player piano. Shoved against the back wall of the
sitting room, it seemed to be trying to shrink into the shadows. Sally had never heard any music in the house, and she wondered
why Mason Jackson bothered to keep a player piano that was never played.

A segment of the shallow river was visible through the back door, and while she ate her breakfast Sally watched the water
between two yellow willow saplings, watched the snowflakes shimmer in a light that seemed to come from nowhere before they
folded into the ripples of the surface.

“You l-l-like it here?” Uncle Mason asked as he stood at the sink and rinsed off the frying pan.

“I like it here fine.” She hadn’t meant the statement to come out as flat as it did. “I mean, I really do like it here,” she
said, making an effort to sound enthusiastic. “I don’t know what I would have done…”

“M-m-maybe in the spring we can get you over to Amity for some typing classes.”

“Why do I need to know how to type?”

“It’s a g-good skill for a g-girl to know, that’s all.”

She thought she could sense what he was implying: she needed a marketable skill for later, when Uncle Mason wasn’t around.

“I guess,” she said with a shrug.

She helped him dry the dishes and then watched as he got down to his work of whittling. He was whittling a cane for Swill’s
wife, who was having trouble with her hip, he’d said.

It was Sunday, and Sally had nothing to do. On other days of the week she cooked simple fare for their supper — chicken stew,
Welsh rarebit, fried eggs. But on Sundays, Mason Jackson made it clear that she was supposed to fill the hours doing whatever
she chose.

The problem was, she couldn’t decide what to choose to occupy herself. She wanted to get out and have some fun. But from what
she’d seen so far, there wasn’t much fun to be had in Fishkill Notch. And it was snowing. What was there to do in the snow
when she didn’t even have proper boots?