The Dry Grass of August(64)
Puddin sat on the bed by the window, the breeze ruffling her pink pj’s. “Read to me, Jubie?”
“First let me put some mosquito oil on you.”
Before I finished, Puddin was curled up asleep, her face soft as a baby’s. I stretched out next to her, trying to get comfortable, but the oil burned my skin and the sheets felt stiff. I could hear Stell and Carter in the wooden rockers on the porch, their muffled voices drifting up through the window. The fan whirred back and forth, rippling the sheets, the hum of the motor blending with the pounding surf. My head still ached and my eyes stung, but I couldn’t keep them open. I moved my leg so it just touched Puddin’s, and thought about Mary in a pine box in a freight train, jolting along the tracks northwest to Charlotte.
I woke, sure Mary was near. I groped the darkness. “Where are you?” I heard her say, “Charlotte,” clearly, as if she were standing by my bed. “Mary?” I felt blood whooshing in my ears, heard her singing, “Amazing grace, how sweet I see, that lost a soul of sound. ” The mixed-up words made me shiver. I swung my feet off the bed, whispered, “Mary?” No answer, just the crash of waves on the beach. I stumbled toward the bathroom. Maybe she was there. I stared at myself in the mirror. My hair stood out from my head, my face was creased, my eyes puffy. I knew what I had to do. Mary had told me.
Stell’s brush and comb were lined up on the back of the toilet with her deodorant and toothbrush. I used her stuff and my toothbrush, put on jeans and a T-shirt, socks and my Keds. I couldn’t find a bra, but I was afraid to turn on the light and wake Puddin.
Every time one of the stairs creaked, I stopped, listening, straining to see in just the night-light in the downstairs hall.
Mama’s pocketbook was on the kitchen table. I took twenty dollars from her wallet and the keys to the Packard. I grabbed the keys to Daddy’s Chrysler, too, off a hook by the back door, and dropped them in my pocket.
The door stuck. I had to jerk it open, making a scraping sound. I ran down the steps out to where the Packard was parked and drove slowly down the beach road at two in the morning, my eyes darting from the pavement to the speedometer, concentrating on steering as straight as I could. At the fishing pier I pulled over and got out to adjust the seat. My knees almost buckled under me and I had to hold the side of the car. I stood and breathed in the wind off the ocean, looking down the pier to where one light burned at the end. Several fishermen stood beneath it. I opened the trunk, lifted Mary’s flowered bag with all her things and the three fruitcakes, and put it in front with me.
CHAPTER 25
The beach highway follows the shoreline, so you have to go east to go west—Daddy said that every time we went home from Pawleys. As I drove up the coast, the road a black ribbon in the moonlight, I thought about how mad Daddy would be when he realized I’d taken the Packard. At least I wouldn’t be there when he woke up, sour and brittle until he could mend himself with a toddy. He’d take a sip, sigh with pleasure, and say, “The sun’s over the yardarm somewhere in the world.” But this time he wouldn’t have that morning drink. My foot went down harder on the gas pedal. He’d figure out some way to get the Chrysler started, keys or no keys, and take off after me.
Just south of the state line, I took Highway 9 West, Mama’s favorite route, easy because it tracks the border between North and South Carolina almost all the way to Charlotte. I concentrated on the things Daddy had taught me about driving, like braking before a curve and accelerating in it. “A good car loves a curve,” he’d told me. “Good drivers do, too.” Every time a car came toward me with its high beams on, I remembered to focus on the Packard’s hood ornament, lining the swan up with the right side of the road. “If you flash your brights,” Daddy said, “you blind two drivers.” But I’d seen him do just that and mutter “son of a bitch” while he kept his high beams on.
One time when the two of us were in our old stick-shift Chevy, he said he’d show me something if I promised not to tell Mama. He got the car going fast, pulled up the hand brake, turned the steering wheel, and in nothing flat we were headed back the way we’d come.
“Goose it, Daddy!” I shouted. He was yee-hawing so loud he didn’t hear me.
“The bootlegger’s one-eighty,” he yelled, and did it again.
Daddy always got the man to check the oil and water when he bought gas, no matter what the gauges said, so I did that when I got to Dillon, ninety miles from Pawleys, almost halfway home. The man who came to the car window peered at me through thick glasses as if he were questioning whether I was old enough to drive. But all he said was, “Fill ’er up?”
“Please, and check the oil, the radiator, the tires . . .”
“I know how to service a car.”
After I paid him, I pulled Mary’s bag close. I wanted to touch her things. The buckles on the leather straps of her bag were hard to open. I’d seen her struggle with them, tugging against the clasps, forcing the metal picks through the holes, saying, “Got ’er!” when the buckles finally gave.
I spread the edges of the opening apart and was overcome by the smell of Cashmere Bouquet.
Her white Bible wasn’t in the bag. Mama must have sent it back with her.Young Mary and Link might want it for the funeral, and Mama would have thought of that. I sat for a long while under the yellow light at the filling station, holding Mary’s Fuller Brush wide-toothed comb that Mama had given her. It still had a few hairs in it, long and rough, dark and curly. I pulled them out and wrapped them around and around my finger.