The Midnight Cool Page 18

  When they parted he held her a minute, bursting to tell her about the Raymond and about the land in the Tisdale addition. But no. Not yet. There would be time for that. A time for war and a time for peace, men were saying these days. A time to reap and a time to sow. Or, as it said it the window of the Citizens’ Club around the corner, a time to rip and a time to sew.

  Bone Dry

  On March 1 the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union threw a party. They were celebrating the new stricter prohibition law that, after eight years of temperance had left Tennessee wet as ever, now promised to make it not just dry, but bone dry.

  I’ll be at the party, Charles had written on the note he stuffed in the hole in the Everbright wall. I got good news.

  He had been gone, out buying mules, and had not seen her in weeks. Lately things were happening at such a speed his heart was always going like a flywheel. He had the plat for the Tisdale addition land auction. Just as with the Aladdin catalog, he had opened it and studied it so many times its creases were white and soft. He had circled the best lots. The sale was on Friday, only three days away.

  At the auction that Saturday, Bonnyman had come up to meet him, and given him another raise. Any day now, he said. We’ll be in the fight. Get ready.

  That evening he had filled out the order form at the back of the Aladdin Homes catalog. Sent off for the Raymond. It was easy as that. Just sat down on the shack steps after feeding the mules and checked a box marked COD.

  Afterwards he had walked up to Jack Dillehay’s house. He was on the roof, hammering shingles. Charles walked around the house and admired it. Said, with a lift in his voice, that he would soon be building one of his own.

  Jack Dillehay nodded. I love this place, he said, sweeping his hammer to encompass the tobacco fields behind him. I love every tree. I love every bird in these trees. There’s been a mockingbird singing in that tree since I was knee high. I swear it’s the same bird now. I swear he’ll live to be a hundred. When I die I want them to bury me right there so I can keep listening to that damn mockingbird.

  He went back to pounding shingles. Charles shaded his eyes and looked into the setting sun. The world was getting greener by the day. All around him he felt the energy of spring, the birds getting busy making their nests, the first buds popping on the trees. Buying a house was the easiest thing he had ever done. Just checked that box marked COD. Put it in an envelope. Put a stamp in the corner. He looked up at Jack Dillehay against the blue sky. What a feeling it must be, to love a place like that. Someday he would feel the same way.

  Well remember what a man needs, above all, Jack.

  What’s that? He looked over the edge, nails between his lips.

  Charles grinned up at him. Above all he needs a roof.

  The party was in the auditorium on the second floor of town hall, which was hung with crepe paper streamers and the femur bones of cows with bone dry written on them. A banner over the stage read next the nation. Above it, a carved wooden eagle glared. At a long table ladies stood behind crystal bowls of cherry smash punch. Charles got in line for a glass. A man he had bought a mule from a few weeks before came over to talk. He wanted to know if his mule was in the fight yet.

  Charles grinned. He’s on the path to glory, sir, sure enough. Mules are gonna win the war.

  In front of another table boys and girls were lined up to sign a pledge against liquor, tobacco, and caffeine. Two girls chanted together, The lips that touch liquor shall never touch mine. One boy reached into his mouth and hooked out a wad of tobacco and threw it on the floor just before he picked up the pen to sign.

  Where you planning on putting this Raymond? Billy had said when Charles told him what he had done.

  I’m gonna buy a little lot.

  He should have known he had set himself up.

  Well which is it, Charlie boy? A little, or a lot?

  With his glass of punch he went looking for her in the crowd. His heart was whirring. Around him all the talk was of the intercepted secret telegram that had just been published. The Zimmermann telegram. It was outrageous, this telegram, everyone agreed. An invitation from Germany to Mexico to wage war together on the United States. Fight together, make peace together. Win back for Mexico the lost lands of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

  Preposterous! an old woman said.

  Surely this will shake Wilson to action, a man said. First they attack our ships. Now they tell Mexico they’ll take back Texas and Arizona? Insanity!

  You know who wants us to fight? said another. J. P. Morgan wants us to fight, and all his fat-cat friends on Wall Street. They got millions sunk into it already and they can’t stand to lose on their investment. Well I ain’t fighting for them.

  I heard there are U-boats off of Long Island.

  That don’t worry me. Long Island’s a damn sight far from here.

  They told Mexico they’d help em win back Texas and Arizona!

  Mexico can have em, if you ask me.

  I hear old Kaiser Bill is shut up in a concrete bunker. They lower down his food and drink through a two-foot-wide hole.

  You’d have to lower down more than food and drink if it was me in there.

  Ah, German women are too fat. They’d stop you up in there like a cork in a bunghole.

  Well as long as they got the right end in, I wouldn’t mind.

  Which end is that?

  Ah, I ain’t gotta tell you. Take what you want from her whenever you want and not have to listen to her yammer all day.

  Where was Catherine? A flash of doubt struck Charles. The last time he saw her she had told him the second anniversary of her mother’s death was approaching. Then disappeared behind a curtain of melancholy that he could not shift, hard as he tried. She was still such a mystery to him. Sometimes he felt he hardly even knew her.

  He went back and got more punch and drank it in one toss. Red and sweet and not much else. He walked over to the stage and looked up, studying the eagle. He wondered if anything would be different, with the new liquor law. One thing was sure. The Johnson twins would hike their prices.

  A man was saying his name. The manager from a delivery company they had bought a bunch of mules from back in November. The kind of man who stood too close. Awful breath.

  Well who let the mule man in? he crowed disdainfully.

  Charles stammered a moment, caught off guard, until the man put a hand on his shoulder.

  A joke! he said, in a burst of bad air. Come with me. There’s someone I want you to meet.

  He steered Charles to a group of men standing around a table in the corner. High class. George Tisdale and John Rich. On the far side of them was Leland Hatcher. He had one of the femur bones resting on his shoulder, like a club. In his other hand was a glass of cherry smash. Charles felt his knees go a little soft.

  This is the fellow I was telling you about, the manager said, presenting Charles to Hatcher like a prize. The one who works for the British Army.

  Leland Hatcher smiled at Charles, the smile that looked as if it was pulled on a string. Charles had forgotten how short he was. He looked down at him, struck dumb a moment. Coming face-to-face with him after all these months was disorienting.

  Have we met? Hatcher said pleasantly.

  Charles said the one thing that came into his head.

  I bought your horse, sir.

  Oh yes. Hatcher cleared his throat. A tiny sound. He shot a glance at the manager, who was standing there smiling. Whatever happened to that horse?

  Did the only responsible thing, Charles said. Took her up to the killing floor.

  Hatcher looked again at the other man. Well. As I recall. She was a bit hard to handle. He cleared his throat, knocked the femur bone twice against his shoulder. Now tell me. What is it you do for the British Army, exactly?

  Charles began to tell him, and Hatcher listened intently for a minute, nodding, growing obviously impressed, then stopped him midsentence so that he could introduce him to Tisdale and Rich. Charles was in h
is hands now, he could see that. Nothing to do but submit to it.

  Finally, Hatcher was saying, here we have a young man of decisive action in Richfield.

  Charles swallowed and shook their hands. He thought of Twitch saying, You’re in with the big bugs now, when he had his lunch with Kuntz and Bonnyman. If Twitch could see him now.

  Tisdale was big and barrel-chested, with a jaw like a gate. He asked him about the mules, about what happened to them when they got to France.

  Charles did his best to imitate Bonnyman’s somber all-business tone.

  Everything from pack machine guns to haul kitchen wagons. We got to send em over constantly, he said. See mules don’t keep. They ain’t—they’re not hams.

  The men laughed. Hatcher was knocking the femur bone gently against his shoulder, smiling at Charles.

  What was I just saying, George? We need more young men like this one, don’t we?

  Well, Tisdale said, I agree with you there, Leland. We should have gotten into it two years ago, after the Lusitania. They come along and torpedo a passenger ship full of Americans and we give them a slap on the wrist.

  We can’t get into it, Rich said. His voice was weak, and he had the whitest, finest hair Charles had ever seen on a man. We’ve got five hundred thousand German nationals living in this country. Imagine the power they would have if they united.

  Well if they do, Hatcher said, we got five hundred thousand lampposts we can hang them from.

  Silence, after this.

  If old schoolmaster Wilson doesn’t quit this nonsense, Hatcher finally said, I’m going to go up there and pick up his telephone and make the damn call myself.

  Tisdale told a story about how the day before he had encountered a young mother he knew on Court Square. Her two young boys were licking ice cream cones by the fountain and she was sitting on a bench, crying.

  Tisdale put his hand on his cheek and tossed his head, imitating the young woman.

  ‘I can’t stand to see them eating ice cream,’ she told me. ‘Can’t stand it, knowing that at this very moment in Armenia little children are starving to death, worse than starving, being herded together and shot, children just like my own boys.’ And mark my words, with tears streaming down her face she stood up and snatched those ice cream cones right out of their little hands.

  Rich shook his head. Women, he said.

  Hatcher had put his glass on the table and was beckoning to someone. Charles looked and felt his heart jump. It was Catherine. She was wearing a blue-black dress that shimmered. Pearls at her neck and in her ears. She looked beautiful.

  He drew his shoulder blades together.

  Someone here I’d like you to meet, Hatcher said to her. This fellow works for the British Army.

  She smiled at him. Her eyes were red.

  This is my daughter, Catherine, Hatcher said.

  Charles held out his hand. Hello, Miss Hatcher. Pleased to meet you.

  Hatcher asked him where he was from, and he stammered and said Bristol.

  Oh, have I got a story about Bristol, Tisdale said, eyes big. He stole a look at Catherine. But it’s not for mixed company. You kin to the Kings?

  Nossir.

  Tisdale raised one bushy eyebrow. Where’d you go to school up there?

  Charles mumbled something. He suddenly wanted to run, or sock the man in his big gate jaw. Then Hatcher stepped forward.

  For God’s sake, George. Don’t grill the boy.

  Charles stole a look at Catherine. She was standing next to her father, her dress shining like beetle wings. She seemed miles away. He slipped his hand into his pocket and felt for the auction plat. He needed to be alone with her. If only all these men would disappear.

  Tisdale emptied his glass of cherry smash. Now what is it they say about mules, Mister McLaughlin?

  Well they say a lot of things, Charles said, to laughter from the men. He thought of the framed article on Pendergrass’s wall. But some like to say, ‘No hope of progeny, no pride of posterity.’

  Tisdale nodded, pleased. ‘He hath neither child nor brother: yet there is no end of all his labor.’ Ecclesiastes, chapter four, verse eight.

  Lonesome life, Rich said, for the humble beast.

  Well what I wanted to point out, Tisdale said, thrusting his empty glass at Hatcher, is that the lowly mule can always do what the Hatchet here did. Just buy himself a family tree.

  His tone was harsh, nearly cruel. Charles looked back at Catherine. She was looking at the ground.

  Hatcher ignored Tisdale. He lifted the femur bone and with it made an arc that encompassed the room.

  Bone dry! he boomed. Look around, Mister McLaughlin. Remember this day. A fine day for Tennessee. Next, the nation. Think of it! The Negro will be saved from himself. Your children will grow up in a country free of the evils of vice. Crime. Adultery. They will grow to be the finest instruments of God the world has ever seen.

  That is, said Rich, swallowing the last of his punch and smiling wryly, if they’re not speaking German.

  Hatcher spun to face him. His eyes were suddenly wild.

  It is talk like that that keeps us down! Talk like that that works against us! Talk like that will destroy us!

  He lifted the cow bone above his head and swung it down on the table. Half a dozen cups of cherry smash went flying. Red arcing everywhere. Charles saw a spray of it hit Catherine’s face at the same moment he felt it hit his neck, then the cold sticky drip into his collar. The glasses hit the floor and shattered.

  Around them people looked over. The manager scurried off, muttering something about finding a girl to clean it all up. Tisdale had his handkerchief out, mopping his brow. Rich took out his and dabbed at his shirtfront. As if it had been a small spill, a little accident.

  Hatcher took a step back, broken glass crunching beneath his shoes. He was still holding the bone, glaring at Tisdale and Rich. His mouth opened as if he was about to say something. Then he dropped the bone and strode to the door at the back of the room.

  Tisdale frowned at his handkerchief and looked at Catherine.

  I forgot, he said briskly. This must be a difficult night for your father.

  He stepped over and handed her a clean handkerchief. She took it, not looking at him. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Lifting her gaze to Charles for the briefest moment, she said, Excuse me. I’m going outside to get some air.

  He followed as quickly as he could. Going down the stairs two at a time, his boots echoing in the stairwell.

  He found her in the shelter of the building, buckling the belt of a green coat. Beneath it her skirt blew in the gusty wind.

  Well now you’ve seen for yourself, she said, pressing her fingertips to the corners of her eyes. This is what I’ve been talking about. It’s impossible to know what’s going on behind that smile of his. When I go home tonight, we’ll pretend that never happened. We’ll never speak of it again. Oh! Her lip trembled. I don’t want to go home at all.

  He rolled a cigarette and lit it and handed it to her. Rolled one for himself. He took a long drag.

  She held hers, studying the tip. There was a slight red stain on her cheek from the spilled punch.

  These are mad times, she said, shaking her head. Sometimes it feels like a bad dream. Germany and Mexico want to attack us and take back Texas. Doesn’t that sound just like a bad dream?

  What was that Tisdale meant, about your father buying a family tree?

  Catherine took a drag and sighed, letting out a stream of smoke. The pearls on her ears quivered. The portraits, she said, in the Everbright dining room. He bought them with the house. The family he bought that place from, the aftermath of the war ruined them. When my father bought the house he bought almost everything in it. I think he’s got himself half convinced they really are our ancestors. Oh, he’s a liar! I cannot stand to even be in the same room as him tonight—

  She pressed her fingers to her eyes again.

  Oh. I’m a wreck. I feel I might go to pieces any minute.
r />   She looked at him, drawing her hands away.

  What’s your good news? I could use some. Did you miss me when you were gone away?

  A shiver of remorse caught him by surprise, remembering the girl up in the Barrens, all these months ago. He shook it off and tried to tease her.

  When you were away this winter sometimes I got to thinking you’d run off and married a West Tennessee boy.

  I’m not marrying anybody, she said sharply. Ever.

  Not marrying anybody? That’s crazy. He looked at her. She was biting her lip. Oh. I get it. You’re pulling my leg.

  I’m serious.

  All girls ought to get married, he said simply. Especially one as pretty as you.

  She glared at him. He put his cigarette in his mouth.

  Well I guess that was the wrong thing to say, he said, miserable.

  I’m sorry, she said. Tonight’s the night— Her voice broke up.

  It dawned on Charles then.

  Your mother.

  She nodded, her mouth tight. It was tonight. Two years ago tonight.

  He felt that he should do something, but he did not move any closer. He licked his lips. His mouth was coated with the sickly sweet remains of the cherry smash. He looked at the glowing tip of his cigarette. He had his whole speech lined up, about the house and the land. He had the whole thing lined up, but nothing was going like he had expected.

  I’m real sorry, Cat, he said.

  How did your mother die, Charles?

  He ran his hand through his hair. Just the question filled him with shame. The truth was something he could never tell Catherine, not ever, that his mother died in a whorehouse.

  She got sick, he said. He fumbled with the cigarette and dropped it and picked it up. My father, if he hadn’t been killed, things would have been a lot different.

  There’s something I don’t understand, Catherine said, turning to him. If your father was such a big man, why have you never tried to find his family? Why, you don’t even know his name. You know nothing about him. It’s all such a big mystery.