Anne Tyler - If Morning Ever Comes

“Plate of okra!” Matilda shouted. “That’s what my mind fixed on!”

“Be right good. I declare if it wouldn’t be.”

Ben Joe reached into his shirt pocket. From behind a crumpled pack of cigarettes and an old lighter of his mother’s he pulled out this morning’s letter, already dingy at the creases. He held it up under the tiny bulb that was supposed to be a reading lamp and read, once more: Dear Ben Joe: We received yours of the 21st & are glad to hear you are well. It is too bad that the Asian flu shots gave you Asian flu. Also we are sorry to hear that you are cold.The big news of course is that Joanne is home. She left her husband altho it’s not clear why and of course the first thing Mama asked was was he unfaithful, they all are, & Joanne just laughed at her. The baby is as cute as she can be & is going to be spoiled rotten.Tessie is going to have to have braces, which will be quite an expense. Gram is going to knit you a sweater for the cold but has forgotten the measurement from the tip of your shoulder to your wrist & would like you to tell her. Also what is your favorite color & if it’s still purple forget it, because whenever she knits you a purple sweater she gets to seeing polka dots in front of her eyes before she goes to bed at night.Ben Joe, you did not write telling Gram not to shop any more. Last night we had crabmeat and black olives in our Monday-night casserole. She also thinks I am not handling the money right & so yesterday she went over the bank books and decided the bank had credited us with $112 too much so she quick withdrew it and put it in another bank before they could find out. I had to go & change banks back again this noon.Let us hear from you & don’t worry.

Sincerely,

Jennifer.

Ben Joe put the letter back in his shirt pocket. He pulled the lever under the arm of his chair and pushed against the back of the seat to make it slant more. There was no point in staying awake worrying about things.

Someone sat down in the curly-haired boy’s lap. The boy awoke with a start and said, “Hey! What you—” and began fighting, flailing his arms out and heaving his body and hitting mainly Ben Joe. Whoever sat in the boy’s lap was big and solid and quiet, in a heavy tweed overcoat, calmly tipping a bottle to his mouth.

“Brandon!” Matilda shrieked. She stood up and, with one hand still holding the baby to her shoulder, reached out and grabbed a handful of Brandon’s hair and shook him by it, hard. “You no-count you, Brandon—”

“I’m just setting , Matilda,” said Brandon.

“You setting on somebody , Brandon.”

Brandon turned around and looked beneath him.

“Oh, hey,” he said.

“You are sitting on me,” said the boy. He was breathing hard, and looked as if he might start crying.

“I surely am sorry, sir. I didn’t see you atall, sir, I come to say hey to this yellow-haired gentleman—”

“Get yourself offen him, Brandon.”

Brandon rose, confused, and bent over Ben Joe’s rumpled seatmate. “I surely do hope I didn’t hurt you none,” he said. “I surely am sorry. I surely am.”

“Forget it,” the boy said. He straightened his jacket and then settled down further in his seat and closed his eyes, determinedly.

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Brandon.”

“Yes’m.”

“He ain’t never like this,” she said to Ben Joe. “It’s that Jackie egg him on. Brandon has always been a real pillar to me, a real — Come up here and set, Brandon.”

“Yes’m, just a minute. I want to speak some with this yellow -haired—”

He sat down heavily on the arm of Ben Joe’s seat, but taking care not to touch the boy, and leaned across to look at Ben Joe.

“Believe you Ben Joe Hawkes,” he said. He switched the bottle to his left hand and shook Ben Joe’s hand several times, up and down. His breath smelled of gin, but other than his first mistake he didn’t act like a drunken man. His face was sharp and alert, and although he seemed very young there were the beginnings of lines at each corner of his mouth, downward-pulling lines that made him look as if he were in pain. “I’m Brandon Hayes. This here my wife, Matilda. Matilda, this Dr. Hawkes’s boy. Dr. Phillip Hawkes — him.”

“That so?” Matilda said. She turned to Ben Joe, still uncertain, and when Ben Joe nodded, she look relieved. “Looks like you know a little , Brandon, I will say. I remember about him having a boy, though I ain’t met you ever.” She switched the baby to her other shoulder and sat down again, sideways, so that she could see them over the back of the seat. “Your daddy fixed Brandon here’s leg,” she said. “Was broke in two places, back when he a boy and me just a girl in the same Sunday school class with him. I remember.”

“It’s true,” Brandon said. He settled down more comfortably on the arm of the chair. “Way I saw you, you were in the office with him, wanting him to come home for supper. You mustn’t of been but twelve or so but I remembered. I good at faces, yes sir. Been eight years since I even seen Sandhill, but there’s many I remember though they mightn’t remember me. How your daddy now?”

“Well …” Ben Joe said, startled. “He, uh, he’s dead. Died some six years back.”

Brandon looked down at his knees and shook his head, silently. His wife made a sad little cooing sound.

“I do say,” Brandon said finally. “Well, I do say. I surely am sorry to hear it. We been gone so long, they don’t write the news like they should … I surely am sorry.”

“How he go?” Matilda asked.

“Heart attack.”

“Law, law.” She shook her head too, echoing Brandon. “Well, I know it was a dignified passing. Wan’t it?”

Ben Joe, taken off guard, didn’t answer.

“Oh, I sure it was very dignified, Matilda,” Brandon said soothingly.

In the cramped space between the wall and the curly-haired boy, Ben Joe carefully crossed his foot over his knee and twisted one shoelace, staring down at it.

“Well , now,” said Matilda, suddenly becoming very brisk. “How about your mama?”

“Oh, she’s fine.”

“And there more of you, ain’t there? A passle of sisters? I recollect that. How they?”

“Oh, they’re fine, too. The oldest one’s got a baby of her own now.”

“Well, glory. She marry a Sandhill boy?”

“No. She left Sandhill a little before Dad died, and got a job, and then a few years back she called to say she was married to this boy from Georgia. Haven’t seen her since, or the boy, either. They live in Kansas. But she’s at home now.”

“Well, I know you be glad to see her. I bet your mama went to Kansas when the baby come, hey?”

“No.”

“That daddy of yours a fine man,” Brandon said. “Fine man.”

“Well,” said Madida, “your mama had enough to do with chirren of her own, I reckon. Maybe just couldn’t make it all the way to Kansas.”

“That’s a nice-looking baby you got,” said Ben Joe.

“Well, thank you. Name’s Clara Sue. I knew it’d be a girl. I got fatter and fatter in the behind all the time I carrying her.”

“Now, Matilda, he don’t want to hear about that.”

“Well, I just mentioning. You want to sleep, Mr. Ben Joe, and I know Brandon he wild to get back to that gin.”

“It was good seeing you,” Ben Joe said. He and Brandon stood up and shook hands, and then Brandon left and Matilda turned around to face forward again.

When he was settled back in his seat, Ben Joe leaned his head against the windowpane and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the vibration of the pane against his skin. He wished he knew what state they were passing through. The last of New Jersey, maybe. He felt unsure of his age; in New York he was small and free and too young, and in Sandhill he was old and tied down and enormous, but what age was he here?