LaVyrle Spencer - Morning Glory

She had never seen any man but Glendon wash up. Grandpa was the only other male she’d ever lived with and he certainly hadn’t bared himself to any female. Staring at Will Parker while he performed his ablutions, Eleanor suddenly realized she was watching a very personal thing, and turned away guiltily.

"Washcloth’s for you-use it." She left the room to give him privacy.

She returned several minutes later to find him shiny faced, buttoning up his shirt. "Got this." She held up a yellow toothbrush. "It was Glendon’s, but I’ll clean it with soda if you don’t mind using it secondhand."

He did, but ran his tongue over his teeth and nodded. She fetched a cup, spooned in soda and filled it with boiling water from the teakettle. "Person oughta have a toothbrush," she declared, stirring with Glendon Dinsmore’s.

She handed it to Will along with a can of toothpowder, then stood and watched while he dumped some in his palm.

Will didn’t like being watched. He’d been watched for five years and now that he was out he ought to be able to do his private business without feeling somebody’s eyes on him. But even with his back turned, he felt her scrutiny all the while he used her husband’s toothbrush, savoring the toothpowder that was so sweet he wanted to swallow it instead of spitting it out. When he finished, she ordered, "Well, set yourself down at the table."

She served him vegetable soup, hot and fragrant, thick with okra and tomato and beef. His hands rested beside the bowl while he fought the compulsion to gobble it like an animal. His stomach seemed to roll over and beg, but he hesitated, savoring not only the smell but the anticipation, and the fact that he was allowed as much time as he wanted-no bells would ring, no guards would prod.

"Go ahead… eat."

It was different, being told by her instead of the guards. Her motives were strictly friendly. Her eyes followed his head as he dipped the spoon and lifted it to his lips.

It was the best soup he’d ever tasted.

"I asked how long since your last meal. You gonna tell me or not?"

His glance flickered up briefly. "A couple of days."

"A couple of days!"

"I stopped in a restaurant in town to read the want ads but there was a waitress there I didn’t particularly care for, so I moved on without eating."

"Lula Peak. She’s a good one to avoid, all right. She been chasin’ men since she was tall enough to sniff ’em. So you been eating green apples a coupla days, have you?"

He shrugged, but his glance darted briefly to the bread behind her.

"There’s no disgrace in admitting you’ve gone hungry, you know."

But there was. To Will Parker there was. Just emerging from the jaws of the depression, America was still overrun with tramps, worthless vagrants who’d deserted their families and rode the flatcars aimlessly, begging for handouts at random doorsteps. During the past two months he’d seen-even ridden with-dozens of them. But he’d never been able to bring himself to beg. Steal, yes, but only in the most dire straits.

She watched him eat, watched his eyes remain downcast nearly all the time. Each time they flicked up they seemed drawn to something behind her. She twisted in her chair to see what it was. The bread. How stupid of her. "Why didn’t you say you wanted some fresh bread?" she chided as she rose to get it.

But he’d been schooled well to ask for nothing. In prison, asking meant being jeered at or baited like an animal and being made to perform hideous acts that made a man as base as his jailers. To ask was to put power into the sadistic hands of those who already wielded enough of it to dehumanize any who chose to cross them.

But no woman with three fresh loaves could comprehend a thing like that. He submerged the ugly memories as he watched her waddle to the cabinet top and fetch a knife from a crock filled with upended utensils. She scooped up a loaf against her hip and returned to the table to slice off a generous width. His mouth watered. His nostrils dilated. His eyes riveted upon the white slice curling softly from the blade.

She stabbed it with the tip of the knife and picked it up. "You want it?"

Oh, God, not again. His hungry eyes flew to her face, taking on the look of a cornered animal. Against his will, the memory was rekindled, of Weeks, the prison guard, with his slitty, amphibian eyes and his teeth bared in a travesty of a smile, his unctuous voice with its perverted laughter. "You want it, Parker? Then howl like a dog." And he’d howled like a dog.

"You want it?" Eleanor Dinsmore repeated, softer this time, snapping Will back from the past to the present.

"Yes, ma’am," he uttered, feeling the familiar knot of helplessness lodge in his throat.

"Then all you got to do is say so. Remember that." She dropped the bread beside his soup bowl. "This ain’t jail, Mr. Parker. The bread ain’t gonna disappear and nobody’s gonna smack your hand if you reach for it. But around here you might have to ask for things. I’m no mind reader, you know."

He felt the tension drain from him, but he held his shoulders stiff, wondering what to make of Eleanor Dinsmore, so dictatorial and unsympathetic at times, so dreamy and vague at others. It was only the painful memories that had transported him-she wasn’t Weeks, and she wouldn’t make him pay for picking up the food.

The bread was soft, warm, the greatest gift he’d ever received. His eyes closed as he chewed his first bite.

They flew open again when she grunted, "Humph!"

Puzzled, he watched her turn her back and move across the room to fetch a crock full of the most beautiful lemon-bright butter in the world. She came back and held it just beyond his reach.

"Say it."

He swallowed. His shoulders stiffened and the wary look returned to his face. His voice came reluctantly. "I’d like some o’ that butter."

"It’s yours." Unceremoniously she clapped it down, then herself, across from him. "And it didn’t hurt you one little bit to ask for it, did it?" She brushed off her fingers and admonished, "Around here you ask, ’cause things are in such a mess it’s the only way you’ll find it most of the time. Well, go ahead, butter your bread and eat."

His hands followed orders while his emotions took additional moments to readjust to her quicksilver mood changes. As he bent over his soup, she warned, "Watch you don’t overdo it. Best if you eat slow till your stomach gets used to decent food again."

He wanted to tell her it was good, better than good, the best he remembered. He wanted to tell her there was no butter in prison, the bread there was coarse and dry and certainly never warm. He wanted to tell her he didn’t remember the last time he’d been invited to sit at somebody’s kitchen table. He wanted to tell her what it meant to him to sit at hers. But compliments were as foreign to him as crocks of butter, so he ate his bread and soup in silence.

While he ate she brought out her crocheting and sat working on something soft and fuzzy and pink. Her wedding ring-still on her left hand-flashed in the lanternlight in rhythm with the hook. Her hands were nimble, but work-worn, and the skin looked like hide. It appeared all the tougher when contrasted against the fine pink yarn as she played it out from one calloused finger.

"What you watchin’?"

He glanced up guiltily.

She adjusted the yarn and smiled. The smile transformed her face. "Never seen a woman crochet before?"

"No, ma’am."

"Makin’ a shawl for the baby. This here’s a shell design." She spread it out on her knee. "Pretty, ain’t it?"

"Yes, ma’am." Once again he was assaulted by yearning, a sense of things missed, a desire to reach out and touch that soft pink thing she was creating. Rub it between his fingers as if it were a woman’s hair.