‘You maybe,’ she said sharply. ‘You’re young enough. Not me. I don’t hold with the new ways, and don’t have to.
I just wish I had my children around me, that’s all. My own sons working this land that’s been in the family so long. Great-grandchildren I could see and hug. This house is big enough for all. But it’s not to be, and that’s God’s will, and we must accept it and believe it’s for the best. And now I do believe that delicious sip of nice cold beer has made me drowsy enough to sleep, so I will excuse myself and go off to bed. You all set out here just as long as you like.’
We all stood up and Dick Fleming helped Mrs Pearl out of her rocker. She smiled at us in the dimness.
‘Good night, all,’ she said in a tremulous voice. ‘Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Now that’s just a little saying we have. You won’t find any bedbugs in this house, I do assure you.’
Then she was gone. The screen door closed behind her. We sat down again. I took Mrs Pearl’s rocker, the cushion still warm. I closed my eyes, rocked back and forth and saw it all. I hoped no one would say anything, and no one did.
After a while, the beer finished, we went inside, locked the door carefully, and went up to bed. We heard Mrs Pearl snoring in the parlor, and we moved on tiptoe, not talking, so as not to wake her.
That night we all slept naked together in the double bed in the big bedroom. I was glad I was between two men, being held by both. I never wanted to be alone again. I fell asleep, the old straw rustling gently beneath me: a derisive whisper.
Our stay in Whittier was twenty-four-hour champagne, the days sun-crisped, the nights moon-cooled. It was a shared dream that changed us all, in ways we could not understand. Something deep was happening to us, but what it was we did not know.
Our daily routine was simple enough. We slept together, although I kept my personal suitcase in the small bedroom. I rumpled the bed, scattered toilet articles about, left cigarette butts in ashtrays, gave the room what I fancied to be a lived-in appearance. All this to mislead Mrs Pearl in case she made an unexpected climb to the second floor, and to fool the cleaning lady when she appeared.
But ‘we slept together. Every night but one.
We rose before 8:00, dressed, went downstairs to have breakfast with Mrs Pearl in the big kitchen. And the size of the breakfasts matched that room: orange juice; oatmeal; eggs; bacon, ham, or pork sausages; pancakes; grits; corn muffins, blueberry muffins, toast; waffles; sweet butter; jams, jellies, and homemade preserves; milk or coffee.
Mrs Pearl bustled about, talking in a blue streak, and seemingly delighted with our appetites and praise for her cooking. She told us (three times) that her quince jelly had won a blue ribbon at the county fair. I could believe it; it was nectar.
After breakfast we usually drove into Whittier to shop. We knew what those gargantuan breakfasts were costing Mrs Pearl, so we took her shopping list into town and paid for the milk, coffee, pancake flour, ham, and all the other goodies. We also loaded her refrigerator with beer, cola, and tonic water, and put two quarts of vodka in the freezer.
By the second day of our stay, practically everyone in Whittier knew us, and we exchanged ‘Howdy’ and ‘Have a nice day’ a dozen times as we went from general store to liquor store to gas station to Hoxey’s.
At Hoxey’s Rose would have a bag of sandwiches made for us. Really dreadful sandwiches: processed cheese on dry white bread, pressed ham on stale rye. But we didn’t care. Everyone was just so nice, it would have been cruel to suggest to them that a luncheon of Twinkies and Yoo-Hoo wasn’t really the best food American agriculture could offer.
Then back to Mrs Pearl’s with our purchases, usually including a special treat for her. (She doted on licorice-filled mints.) Then, around noon, we took our sandwiches and six-pack of beer across the fields. We dunked naked in the muddy stream (even Dick and I were calling it the ‘crick’ by then), and ate our sandwiches and drank our beer, kept cold by immersing the cans in the running water.
On one of those trips Donohue carried our lunch in the emptied, bullet-riddled suitcase that had provided no shield for Hymie Gore. Jack and Dick scooped out a hole under one of the oak trees near the stream and buried the case.
In the afternoon, back at Mrs Pearl’s, I worked on my manuscript, and wrote enough so that I was up-to-date and describing current events. The men washed down the
Buick, then cleaned up Mrs Pearl’s seven-year-old Plymouth. They also consolidated all our gear into four suitcases and three canvas carryalls.
One afternoon they left me at Mrs Pearl’s and drove away, ostensibly to have the Buick gassed, oiled, and tuned. But when they returned, Jack had extra ammunition for all our guns and a complete cleaning kit. He and Dick spent hours stripping down the guns, cleaning them, and reloading. Donohue said Dick was very good at it and could become an expert if he applied himself.
Something else they brought back from their trip were two unlabeled pint bottles of colorless liquid which, Jack assured me, was the finest white lightning in the State of Georgia. I tried a sip and it felt like my vocal cords had been given a shot of Novocain, while sweat ran down from my armpits. I said, when I recovered my voice, that I’d stick to eighty-proof vodka.
But that night, after we returned from Hoxey’s and had a beer with Mrs Pearl on the porch, we retired to our bedroom, and the two men demolished the pints of alky. Fortunately, they were sitting on the edge of the bed as they drank, and all they had to do was fall back.
I lifted up their legs and left the louts, fully clothed, to their groaning unconsciousness. Then I went into the smaller bedroom. It was the only night I slept alone. In the morning they were full of that crazy macho boasting about which one had the worst hangover. I wasn’t sore at them — just amused, and amazed at the way Dick Fleming was acting.
Because, of the three of us, he had changed, was changing, the most. Some of it was physical. He was leaner and harder. The sun was burning his pale, freckled skin a bronzed tan. His hair was bleached to the color of wheat, and his blue eyes seemed deeper, steadier, more knowing. I saw the looks he got from the women in Hoxey’s and on the streets of Whittier.
But less obvious were the changes within. He took a more active role in our sexual shenanigans, frequently as initiator. He insisted on driving the car more often, ordered for us at Hoxey’s, offered his opinions on a multitude of matters in a firm, decisive manner.
I looked at him with astonishment: a new man. When, alone with Donohue, I mentioned something of this, Black Jack flashed me one of his wise grins and said, ‘He’s found his balls.’ Whatever had happened, was happening, I knew Dick and I would never again indulge in those tickle-and-squirm games. The pistonless and stamenless man had become more than a neuter. I was glad for him, I suppose. I wasn’t certain about my own reaction.
So the days passed in a dream, peaceful, golden, and each hour separated us further from what had gone before. We sniffed security like cocaine, certain that the chase had cooled, pursuit had ended, and we could leisurely accomplish all that we had set out to do.
Christmas was on a Sunday that year, and on the preceding Friday we bought a sad, lopsided tree in the gas station lot in Whittier. We brought it home” to Mrs Pearl, lashed on the roof of the Buick. We were certain she would have all the ornaments and tinsel necessary. Women like Mrs Pearl Sniffins don’t throw away Christmas tree ornaments. She didn’t disappoint us.
So on Friday evening, after our return from Hoxey’s, we gathered in what Mrs Pearl called the ‘sitting room’ and decorated our tree. It was, I suppose, a kind of party. We all drank a bottle of port wine. There were jokes, laughter, remembrances of past holidays. It seemed strange to me to be celebrating Christmas in such a warm climate. How can you lie naked on a muddy crick bed on Christmas day? But that wine made everything seem quite normal. I think we sang some carols, more for Mrs Pearl’s sake than ours. She surely was partial to ‘Silent Night.’