Paulette Jiles - Stormy Weather

Then Biggety yelped and came running back down the stairs with Albert behind him clawing at his male parts. Again they went through all the downstairs rooms in reverse order and Albert kept pressing his advantage and both shot out into the yard. Biggety jumped back into Milton’s newspaper car and would not come out. Albert was puffed out to twice his original size and strolled up and down in front of the door with an arched back, making very deep terrible noises.

“Now now,” said Milt. “You really need this dog. G-g-g-get out of there, you flaming coward.” He grabbed Biggety by the neck and threw him out again. Biggety ran under the front veranda. Albert sat down and kept watch on the hole he had run into. Everybody was in for a long day.

Jeanine stood at the door with her hand over her eyes against the hard cold sunshine and watched Milton drive away. She didn’t mind about the dog. But he could have asked her to the dance.

The newspaper came. A subscription, a gift from Milton. It was thrown from the back of an old Model TT Ford truck. The truck was loaded with the Mineral Wells Star and the Dallas Morning News in tight folds. Two little boys in the back hurled the newspapers out to the mailboxes. The boys had neither shoes nor coats but kept themselves warm with hectic energy, flinging the newspapers and getting in one another’s way and arguing. Jeanine shook out the Star and read Milton’s story on the Texas Health Festival in Mineral Wells, with a parade featuring the Queen of Health and her court and tours to the sulfur-water baths at the Baker and Crazy Hotels. There were floods in California that drowned 144 people and a hurricane in New England where 628 people died. Jeanine was envious. How were both coasts getting all that rain and not a drop in Texas?

Shinnery Mountain was gray with forests of mesquite that had lost their leaves and turned the color of winter smoke; studded throughout this cloudy color were the dark greens of live oak and cedar. Jeanine finished cutting cedar seedlings out of another five acres and started a second cultivation of the peach orchard. If only she could get water to it somehow. Every evening her hands hurt; the bucking steering wheel of the tractor fought against her like a live thing. But she soaked her hands in hot water and then sat down at the Singer. She ripped out a secondhand man’s gabardine suit jacket and turned it inside out, cut it once again, lined it with Quadriga cloth, and put in windowpane pockets and a bagged hem. She cut into the squirrel-fur coat and managed a good collar. Bea was allowed on crutches now, and she put the coat on and then propped herself up in front of the hall mirror. She was so happy and grateful it made Jeanine feel terrible. It was nothing but a remade coat with a little fur collar, but Bea turned in front of the mirror and admired herself so. She took Bea to school in the truck. Her younger sister was anxious to show off both her coat and her cast to Miss Callaway and the Miller kids. With the exception of the wet snow in early December, it had not rained in over a year.

She eased the silver horse ring from her finger and opened and closed her hands, put it back on.

“Mayme, when you’re in town look at the junkman’s for paint. Any kind of paint.”

“I’ll find something,” said Mayme. She shook out the Mineral Wells newspaper. “Wow. Fresh paint.”

The next day Mayme came back from town with ten gallons of mint green paint left over from when they built the hospital, so old the labels were gone. She had got them for ten cents apiece.

Dust clouded the windowpanes. Jeanine washed them and then spent three days ripping off the old wallpaper and began painting. The day after it was done she walked again and again through the hall and the parlor to see her shadow thrown on the pale, mint green walls in the pure color and the silence.

President Roosevelt spoke over the radio. The newspapers had said he would give a fireside chat, if people had a fire, if they were willing to listen to chats. Bea’s face was shining with hope as she listened.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money, it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth what they have cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered to, but to minister to ourselves and our fellow men.

“Does anybody know what he’s talking about?” asked Elizabeth.

“Beats me,” said Jeanine and discarded; she and Mayme played Crazy Eights in the winter evening, chasing the elusive one-eyed Jack that would change the suit from clubs to hearts.

JEANINE WALKED TOWARD the entrance of St. Stephen’s church hall in the remade garnet silk dress and jacket and makeup and her last pair of silk stockings. She felt synthetic, like a mannequin made of pressed sawdust and paint. She and Mayme walked through the pool of light at the entrance, while down the street in front of the squat Romanesque church two boys rode double on an uncurried ranch horse singing Show me the way to go home.

“Over there,” a lady said. “They’re taking the boxes over there.”

Jeanine laid her box down on the long table in front of a stout woman in a pie-tin hat. There were stacks of boxes on the floor beside her.

“Name? We just want to know who to thank for contributing.”

“Jeanine Stoddard.”

“Contents?”

Jeanine held out the list. Her hand thrust out of her stiff new jacket-sleeve ringless except for the little silver horse ring jammed onto her little finger. A blunt, small, inelegant hand.

The trumpet player on the bandstand blew out a long flat note and a clarinet responded. Mayme’s auburn hair drifted in slow, pretty waves as she took off her coat. Underneath she wore her new dress in the juniper-colored silk.

“There’s the band!” She turned toward the bandstand as if greeting an old friend. Her skirt flared and settled. “Jeanine, I’ll see you over at that table.”

Minutes later Jeanine saw her sister stepping out onto the floor of the church hall in the arms of a short man to “Stormy Weather.”

“Stormy weather,” said an elderly man. “Don’t we all wish.” He stood and held his hand out to his elderly wife. “Let’s get out amongst them, Mother. It’s a rain dance.”

And then the dance floor was crowded with couples drawn into a two-step by the clarinet’s reedy, sensual tones. Jeanine sat at one of the small tables against the wall and watched her sister swinging around the sanded hardwood floor with the short boy in saddle shoes. There was no sign of Milton Brown. She was sitting alone among the potted palms and tinsel in her new clothes. Trying to have a social life.

“There she is.” Milton took hold of the back of her chair and cleared his throat. “Boys in the band. A little drink or two.” She turned around and smiled up at him with relief. “Hate social lives. They’re no good. I have nine social lives and a drink always makes things a little easier.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on the tablecloth. “My speech becomes faultless. My accent moves into second gear, which is mid-Atlantic.” He put the glasses on again. “And how do you like your blue-eyed boy now, Mister Death?” He sat beside her and handed her a drink. Jeanine laughed and then drank down the paper cup of rum and Coke and it hit her as if she had been gassed.

“Fancy meeting you here,” he said. He turned up his own drink. “I don’t know if you want to dance or not but consider it as taking your life in your hands.”

Milton stood up again and smiled at her. He had been pressed at one time but now he was all wrinkled and his tie seemed to be too tight and it was making his face red.