Paulette Jiles - Stormy Weather

“How much do we have left?”

“There’s a hundred and seventy-five and some change.”

“I’ll do the housework,” said Jeanine. “I’ll keep up the house and cooking. And Mayme’s making twenty a month.”

Mayme said, “All right. But I better see some wash hanging on the line when I come home.”

“And don’t leave it out to get covered in dust,” said Elizabeth. “If you buy chickens you’ll have to build a chicken house or you might just as well feed them to the coyotes. The minute you have hens, Jeanine, every hungry thing out there wants them or the eggs.”

“And you’ve got to keep Bea’s clothes ironed and starched,” said Mayme.

“And throw something down the old well,” said Bea. “Animals get thirsty, they get desperate for water and they’re liable to fall down in it.” She stroked Prince Albert. “We got to put out water in a pan.”

“And you have to learn to can,” said Elizabeth. “We need a pressure cooker and jars. You need to can whatever you can find at the farmers’ market on Saturdays in Mineral Wells.”

Mayme said, “I’ll hand you two dollars a week for groceries.”

“All right,” said Jeanine. “If we moved into town we’d end up in some crummy rent house again. Did we just sit around and talk about this place all those years for nothing?”

“It wasn’t what we expected,” said Mayme. She took off the kerchief and shook it out.

“Well what the hell did you expect?” said Jeanine. She knotted her fingers together in a tight clasp.

“Don’t use that language,” said her mother.

“Can I write ‘hell’?” said Bea.

“No.”

“Mayme, you can do better than that dairy,” said Jeanine.

“I know it,” Mayme said. “Just let me think.”

AND SO THEY decided to stay. They could imagine the old Tolliver place into being. The sisters could dream the unstinting dreams of young people at the edge of adult life where one makes assertions and declarations about the models of cars, the numbers of children, the colors of kitchens that one wants in this future life. Mayme wanted a telephone. It would emit friendly voices from the earpiece, maybe the young man named Robert Faringham would after all, against all odds, call her on this new modern telephone with a rotary dial, and with it would come a subscriber’s book and you could read down the columns of names and find your cousins and your friends. Her auburn hair shone in the lamplight. Mayme had the ability or gift of being happy, which is not all that common. She wanted a job with smart clothes and then a husband and then a home in Fort Worth and four children and herself a chatelaine like Snow White in a ruffled collar and high heels singing “Someday My Prince Will Come.” She had just turned twenty-two so he’d better show up fast. Bea wanted electricity so she could read until the late hours and write in her notebooks. She wanted a teacher who would understand what these notebooks meant to her, who would pick up the Big Chief and read in it, and say My goodness, look at this!

Jeanine wanted the house painted white, and an untroubled life. Spring would come and the fields would be the dark, dense green of new cotton plants and sweet corn. The peach orchard would bloom. She wanted a good mare to run with Smoky and then there would be increase and growth. Jeanine knew the bargain she had made with her mothers and sisters to stay here depended on her, that they did not care about it as much as she did but town life would drag them down into low-wage jobs and restlessness again, they would all scatter and lose their love of one another. This would be home with curtains at the windows and voices of friends come to visit speaking in low tones on the veranda in the evenings. She wanted knowledge about the soil and how windmills worked and the mysteries of hot-water heaters. She would step out of a bath of hot water and scented foam, into a summer suit of dark blue rayon with white polka dots, she would reach into an icebox for a pitcher of cool water. If she could have all this her heart would have been so full of gladness she would have spilled over. If only it would rain.

Her mother wanted a guide or some book of advice. She was moving into a life that was lived by widows, a new, frightening place. It seemed a geography that was shrouded and without color and she was paused at the edge of it.

Bea opened her book again. Then she declaimed aloud, “‘Look down, fair moon, and bathe this scene; Pour softly down night’s nimbus floods, on faces ghastly. Swollen, purple; on the dead, on their backs-’”

Elizabeth said, “Stop, Bea.”

At Strawn’s store they received a message from Mineral Wells; their relatives were coming to visit. Mayme cleaned the lamp chimneys and Jeanine washed what clothes they had and ironed them with the sad iron, raising hot steam in the kitchen. Bea used an old piece of school chalk to whiten her tennis shoes, and they waited nervously for their relatives to arrive.

Aunt Lillian and her daughter Betty drove up in a Model A and stepped out and spread their arms. How glad they were to see them again, how good they looked! The aunt and the cousin glanced at each other and then turned back to Elizabeth and her daughters and smiled again. “Y’all are home!” they said.

Elizabeth smiled and hugged her sister-in-law. “Yes, here we are,” she said.

The sisters and their cousin walked out into the fields, through the gumdrop shapes of invading cedar. Betty was the same age as Jeanine and she had the dark Stoddard hair done in a series of close waves around her head. Her head was glossy with good shampoo and she liked to move it around on her neck in subtle head gestures.

“Why are we walking around in the field?” said Betty. “What are you going to do with all this land?”

“Well, when the cedar is cleared, it’ll be good.” Jeanine waved her hands. “Good land.”

Smoky stood at the far end of the field under a stand of live oak with his ears turned toward their neighbor’s barn. He was searching among all the dried grasses that still carried seed heads and several strands dangled from his mouth.

“What are you going to cut them down with?” said Betty.

“With a saw,” said Jeanine.

“Don’t men normally do that?” asked Betty. She stared at the three-foot cedars as if they were a fixed and eternal element of the world, which could only be altered by men. Large strong men who wielded huge tools.

“I can do it. Why not?” said Jeanine.

Betty took her arm and gave her a little shake. “You better get work in town,” she said. “I never heard of a girl turning into a farmer.”

“Then you ain’t heard much,” said Jeanine.

“And what are you going to do with that horse?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Jeanine. “But I’ll let you know first, all right?”

Mayme said, “Jeanine, hush.”

They turned back toward the house, walking up the slope through stands of Indian grass and Johnson grass. Betty’s Cuban heels turned and she said she was going to break both ankles if they kept on stomping around in the fields.

“Did Mother tell you I got engaged?” she said. “His name is Si. That’s for Silas but I think Silas is so old-fashioned. It’s a redneck name.” They sat on the edge of the concrete tank, under the windmill. It stood braced and thick and cool water poured out of the pipe. “What are y’all doing for men?”

“We left them all behind,” said Jeanine. Mayme stared down at the ground.

“Y’all better come into town and come out to the China Moon here one of these days. The China Moon dance palace. Si steps on my feet a lot.”

“We will,” said Mayme. “We will, before long.”