Helen called to them to shut up, to lay down, to p.i.s.s off.
"You don"t need to bother about any of them but Pinto," she said. "Them other two just cowards."
They stopped in a wide, ill-defined s.p.a.ce where some gravel had been laid down. On one side was a barn or implement shed, tin-covered, and over to one side of it, on the edge of a cornfield, an abandoned farmhouse from which most of the bricks had been removed, showing dark wooden walls. The house inhabited nowadays was a trailer, nicely fixed up with a deck and an awning, and a flower garden behind what looked like a toy fence.
The trailer and its garden looked proper and tidy, while the rest of the property was littered with things that might have a purpose or might just be left around to rust or rot.
Helen had jumped out and was cuffing the dogs. But they kept on running past her, and jumping and barking at the car, until a man came out of the shed and called to them. The threats and names he called were not intelligible to Jinny, but the dogs quieted down.
Jinny put on her hat. All this time she had been holding it in her hand.
"They just got to show off," said Helen.
Neal had got out too and was negotiating with the dogs in a resolute way. The man from the shed came towards them. He wore a purple T-shirt that was wet with sweat, clinging to his chest and stomach. He was fat enough to have b.r.e.a.s.t.s and you could see his navel pushing out like a pregnant woman"s. It rode on his belly like a giant pincushion.
Neal went to meet him with his hand out. The man slapped his own hand on his work pants, laughed and shook Neal"s. Jinny could not hear what they said. A woman came out of the trailer and opened the toy gate and latched it behind her.
"Lois went and forgot she was supposed to bring my shoes,"
Helen called to her. "I phoned her up and everything, but she went and forgot anyway, so Mr. Lockyer brought me out to get them."
- 68*
The woman was fat too, though not as fat as her husband. She wore a pink muumuu with Aztec suns on it and her hair was streaked with gold. She moved across the gravel with a composed and hospitable air. Neal turned and introduced himself, then brought her to the van and introduced Jinny.
"Glad to meet you," the woman said. "You"re the lady that isn"t very well?"
"I"m okay," said Jinny.
"Well, now you"re here you better come inside. Come in out of this heat."
"Oh, we just dropped by," said Neal.
The man had come closer. "We got the air-conditioning in there," he said. He was inspecting the van and his expression was genial but disparaging.
"We just came to pick up the shoes," Jinny said.
"You got to do more than that now you"re here," said the woman-June-laughing as if the idea of their not coming in was a scandalous joke. "You come in and rest yourself."
"We wouldn"t like to disturb your supper," Neal said.
"We had it already," said Matt. "We eat early."
"But all kinds of chili left," said June. "You have to come in and help clean up that chili."
Jinny said, "Oh, thank you. But I don"t think I could eat anything. I don"t feel like eating anything when it"s this hot."
"Then you better drink something instead," June said. "We got ginger ale, c.o.ke. We got peach schnapps."
"Beer," Matt said to Neal. "You like a Blue?"
Jinny waved Neal to come close to her window.
"I can"t do it," she said. "Just tell them I can"t."
"You know you"ll hurt their feelings," he whispered.
"They"re trying to be nice."
"But I can"t. Maybe you could go."
He bent closer. "You know what it looks like if you don"t. It looks like you think you"re too good for them."
"You go."
- 69*
"You"d be okay once you got inside. The air-conditioning really would do you good."
Jinny shook her head.
Neal straightened up.
"Jinny thinks she better just stay and rest here where it"s in the shade."
June said, "But she "s welcome to rest in the house-"
"I wouldn"t mind a Blue, actually," Neal said. He turned back to Jinny with a hard smile. He seemed to her desolate and angry.
"You sure you"ll be okay?" he said for them to hear. "Sure? You don"t mind if I go in for a little while?"
"I"ll be fine," said Jinny.
He put one hand on Helen"s shoulder and one on June "s shoulder, walking them companionably towards the trailer. Matt smiled at Jinny curiously, and followed.
This time when he called the dogs to come after him Jinny could make out their names.
Goober. Sally. Pinto.
The van was parked under a row of willow trees. These trees were big and old, but their leaves were thin and gave a wavering shade. But to be alone was a great relief.
Earlier today, driving along the highway from the town where they lived, they had stopped at a roadside stand and bought some early apples. Jinny got one out of the bag at her feet and took a small bite-more or less to see if she could taste and swallow and hold it in her stomach. She needed something to counteract the thought of chili, and Matt"s prodigious navel.
It was all right. The apple was firm and tart, but not too tart, and if she took small bites and chewed seriously she could manage it.
- 70*
She "d seen Neal like this-or something like this-a few times before. It would be over some boy at the school. A mention of the name in an offhand, even belittling way. A mushy look, an apologetic yet somehow defiant bit of giggling.
But that was never anybody she had to have around the house, and it could never come to anything. The boy"s time would be up, he "d go away.
So would this time be up. It shouldn"t matter.
She had to wonder if it would have mattered less yesterday than it did today.
She got out of the van, leaving the door open so that she could hang on to the inside handle. Anything on the outside was too hot to hang on to for any length of time. She had to see if she was steady. Then she walked a little in the shade. Some of the willow leaves were already going yellow. Some were lying on the ground. She looked out from the shade at all the things there were around the yard.
A dented delivery truck with both headlights gone and the name on the side painted out. A baby"s stroller that the dogs had chewed the seat out of, a load of firewood dumped but not stacked, a pile of huge tires, a great number of plastic jugs and some oil cans and pieces of old lumber and a couple of orange plastic tarpaulins crumpled up by the wall of the shed. In the shed itself there was a heavy GM truck and a small beat-up Mazda truck and a garden tractor, as well as implements whole or broken and loose wheels, handles, rods that would be useful or not useful depending on the uses you could imagine. What a lot of things people could find themselves in charge of. As she had been in charge of all those photographs, official letters, minutes of meetings, newspaper clippings, a thousand categories that she had devised and was putting on disk when she had to go into chemo and everything got taken away. It might end up being thrown out. As all this might, if Matt died.
The cornfield was the place she wanted to get to. The corn was higher than her head now, maybe higher than Neal"s head- - 71*
she wanted to get into the shade of it. She made her way across the yard with this one thought in mind. The dogs thank G.o.d must have been taken inside.
There was no fence. The cornfield just petered out into the yard. She walked straight ahead into it, onto the narrow path between two rows. The leaves flapped into her face and against her arms like streamers of oilcloth. She had to remove her hat so they would not knock it off. Each stalk had its cob, like a baby in a shroud. There was a strong, almost sickening smell of vegetable growth, of green starch and hot sap.
What she "d thought she "d do, once she got in here, was lie down. Lie down in the shade of these large coa.r.s.e leaves and not come out till she heard Neal calling her. Perhaps not even then.
But the rows were too close together to permit that, and she was too busy thinking about something to take the trouble. She was too angry.
It was not about anything that had happened recently. She was remembering how a group of people had been sitting around one evening on the floor of her living room-or meeting room-playing one of those serious psychological games. One of those games that were supposed to make a person more honest and resilient. You had to say just what came into your mind as you looked at each of the others. And a white-haired woman named Addie Norton, a friend of Neal"s, had said, "I hate to tell you this, Jinny, but whenever I look at you all I can think of is- Nice Nellie. "
Jinny didn"t remember making any response at the time.
Maybe you weren"t supposed to. What she said, now, in her head, was "Why do you say you hate to say that? Haven"t you noticed that whenever people say they hate to say something, they actually love to say it? Don"t you think since we "re being so honest we could at least start with that?"
It was not the first time she had made this mental reply. And mentally pointed out to Neal what a farce that game was. For when it came Addie "s turn, did anyone dare say anything - 72*
unpleasant to her? Oh, no. "Feisty," they said or "Honest as a dash of cold water." They were scared of her, that was all.
She said, "Dash of cold water," out loud, now, in a stinging voice.
Other people had said kinder things to her. "Flower child" or "Madonna of the springs." She happened to know that whoever said that meant "Manon of the Springs," but she offered no correction. She was outraged at having to sit there and listen to people "s opinions of her. Everyone was wrong. She was not timid or acquiescent or natural or pure.
When you died, of course, these wrong opinions were all there was left.
While this was going through her mind she had done the easiest thing you could do in a cornfield-got lost. She had stepped over one row and then another and probably got turned around. She tried going back the way she had come, but it obviously wasn"t the right way. There were clouds over the sun again so she couldn"t tell where west was. And she had not known which direction she was going when she entered the field, so that would not have helped anyway. She stood still and heard nothing but the corn whispering away, and some distant traffic.
Her heart was pounding just like any heart that had years and years of life ahead of it.
Then a door opened, she heard the dogs barking and Matt yelling and the door slammed shut. She pushed her way through stalks and leaves in the direction of that noise.
And it turned out that she had not gone far at all. She had been stumbling around in one small corner of the field all the time.
Matt waved at her and warned off the dogs.
"Don"t be scairt of them, don"t be scairt," he called. He was going towards the car just as she was, though from another direction. As they got closer to each other he spoke in a lower, perhaps more intimate voice.
"You shoulda come and knocked on the door."
- 73*
He thought that she had gone into the corn to have a pee.
"I just told your husband I"d come out and make sure you"re okay."
Jinny said, "I"m fine. Thank you." She got into the van but left the door open. He might be insulted if she closed it. Also, she felt too weak.
"He was sure hungry for that chili."
Who was he talking about?
Neal.
She was trembling and sweating and there was a hum in her head, as on a wire strung between her ears.
"I could bring you some out if you"d like it."
She shook her head, smiling. He lifted up the bottle of beer in his hand-he seemed to be saluting her.
"Drink?"
She shook her head again, still smiling.
"Not even drink of water? We got good water here."
"No thanks."
If she turned her head and looked at his purple navel, she would gag.
"You know, there was this fellow," he said, in a changed voice. A leisurely, chuckling voice. "There was a fellow going out the door and he "s got a jar of horseradish in one hand. So his dad says to him, Where you goin" with that horseradish?
"Well I"m goin" to get a horse, he says.
"You"re not goin" to catch a horse with no horseradish.
"Comes back next morning, nicest horse you ever want to see. Lookit my horse here. Puts it in the barn."
I do not wish to give the wrong impression. We must not get carried away with optimism. But it looks as if we have some unexpected results here.
"Next day the dad sees him goin" out again. Roll of duct tape under his arm. Where you goin" now?
"Well I heard my mom say she "d like a nice duck for dinner.
- 74*
"You d.a.m.n fool, you didn"t think you"re goin" to catch a duck with duct tape?
"Wait and see.