Paulette Jiles - Stormy Weather

She didn’t want to go to high school after all. She would hide at home from her own printed words, hide out forever. Tears came to her eyes as she thought of the horror of it. And then at ten at night she heard Winifred Beasley’s voice, metallic and thin. A clear and reasonable Winifred Beasley that spoke to her of the joys of healthful foods, a sweet voice lecturing on the benefits of whole grains and Graham crackers and flaxseed. She was on the radio. Bea stopped pacing to walk over to the old Emerson and turn it up. That was her. After a few moments the announcer said that was the Home Health Hour presented by the Humble Oil Company, which would henceforth be aired a half hour every weekday night. They would never get rid of Winifred Beasley. Never.

At four o’clock on the blazing hot afternoon of September 13

Jeanine took the truck down to Strawn’s Crossroads store and filled the tires with air, and asked old man Joplin to change the oil for her. He peered into the engine with great interest for a long time and then remembered he said he would change the oil. Jeanine went in to pay. Mrs. Joplin was in the backyard, smoking a cigarette among the cages of live chickens, cooling herself in the shade of the live oak trees that surrounded the old frame building. She exhaled smoke heavily into the damp air, threw the cigarette down, and hurried into the store.

“Now, Jeanine,” said Mrs. Joplin. She slapped a package on the counter. The package was wrapped in a sheet and pinned together. “I hate to tell you this, but Martha Jane Armstrong is sending this wedding dress back to you.”

Jeanine’s mouth dropped open. “What’s wrong with it?” She came up to the counter and laid her hand on the package. “It was perfect, Martha Jane said so, what’s wrong?”

Mrs. Joplin bent her long body over the counter and shifted the package around. “There isn’t anything wrong with it. It’s just Martha Jane. They say redheaded people have tempers, and Martha Jane always said she was going to prove otherwise, but she threw that dress down the stairs from that attic of theirs, and then she threw the veil down the stairs too.”

“What happened?”

Mrs. Joplin waved one hand at her. “Sit down. You are always, always in a hurry, Jeanine. You were in a hurry to be born. I remember it well. Your mother had you in three hours flat from when she was first took to when they cut the cord.” Jeanine sat down on the Jell-O rack. “Don’t sit on the Jell-O rack. Take that old chair seat. Well, my grandson Tim said he was going to work for Pacific Contractors. He made up his mind to. Nothing will change it. He has to see the world, he said. He signed a contract for three years, driving heavy equipment out there in the Pacific Ocean.”

Jeanine took the package and held it in her lap. She still had a blank and amazed look on her face. “How is he going to drive heavy equipment on top of the Pacific Ocean?”

Mrs. Joplin shook her head. “On some little island. What they’re doing is, they are grading off airstrips for the Army Air Corps. It’s called Wake Island. And he’s going to be there for three years, and won’t be home in all that time, and Martha Jane said it was as good as saying he didn’t want to get married, and he could just go to the hot place.”

“Three years,” said Jeanine. She had become acutely aware of the slightest hint of treachery from men, which seemed to operate conjointly in their heads with a tendency to get women to wait for them for indefinite periods, while they went wandering around without reason or limits, but she could not come to any conclusions whether Tim Joplin was actually backing out of his promise or not. “That’s 1941,” she said.

“Yes. And I told her, honey, the Pacific Ocean is the hot place.” Mrs. Joplin lifted her thin shoulders in a shrug. “She’s mad enough to eat bees. Her mother said she wasn’t fit to see people. Her mother drove this over here and said either hide it or sell it. As if I was supposed to figure out what to do with it. I don’t know what I ought to do with it. You better take it back home with you. Need some moth crystals?” The tall old woman turned and began to rummage around in the various poisons she kept underneath the counter. “Here.” She slapped a blue box down on the solid walnut. “Those moths just love silk.”

“Didn’t she say she would wait for him?” Jeanine reached for the moth crystals. “It’s only…” Then her voice faded and she said in a lower tone, “Three years.”

“When people are set on getting married they don’t like waiting. It is a true fact. They’re just thinking, ‘Well, it’s the biggest decision I’ll ever make, let’s just get on with it.’ Like somebody that’s going to be hanged at dawn. ‘Why don’t you just hang me at midnight and get it over with?’ Martha Jane has no patience.” Mrs. Joplin lifted her head as one of the Miller kids came in; it was the youngest one. He carefully laid out a penny on the counter and said he wanted a jawbreaker, a purple one. He went away making sucking sounds, with a frightening bulge in his cheek. His bare feet left dust tracks across the floor. “She was set to be married and she’s going to get married one way or another.” The phone rang and Mrs. Joplin reached up and took the earpiece out of the hook and shouted, “What?” She listened. “He’s changing somebody’s oil. No, he don’t want any.” She hung it up again and turned back to Jeanine. “Now, you’ve been out visiting at Ross Everett’s place. How do you find it?”

Jeanine had been out to the ranch in Comanche County three times now. She had watched as Innis ran Smoky at a slow gallop on the exercise track, standing in the stirrups; had gone with him to the corral to admire his foal and the red mare. The foal was nearly six months old; he had shed out to a light gray and his leg bones had grown sturdy and straight. The red mare’s wound was healed to a spiderweb of scar tissue and the mare followed Ross along the fence line and called to him for feed or attention. Innis proudly showed her the wind charger that powered the kitchen and the two clear electric lightbulbs and the electric iron. She had sat down beside Ross as he went over the accounts with her; he explained the shearing costs and how to stay up with the price of mohair in the Dallas newspaper. One evening before she drove home Ross said they needed to do some serious talking, so they sat on the stone-floored veranda and spoke of the future. He wanted her to think clearly about what she would do were anything to happen to him; ranching was a dangerous business. Jeanine found this frightening and she felt like stopping up her ears, but it was a bigger matter than her fright or alarm, and so she sat and read over his will with a still and serious expression as he pointed out the provisions.

The next time she had got through all the roundup gear and the smoke-blackened cooking pots and they had painted the kitchen, and Jugs had helped to move in a new electric refrigerator. Through the tall kitchen window was a view of the branding pens and the long sweeping ridges beyond, now glowing in wet, intense colors. After they married she would look out on this view for many years to come.

Still she had not set a date. Next time, she said, next time . But people lost patience, she thought. They wanted to be married or hanged without delay once it was decided but still Jeanine had said Wait, wait.

“I find it is very well,” said Jeanine. “The old stone house is beautiful.”

“Well, so does Martha Jane,” said Mrs. Joplin. She turned to look out the back door and saw that Mr. Joplin had sat himself down on an orange crate and was now cleaning the spark plugs. If she didn’t say anything he would go on to rebuild the entire engine, but Mrs. Joplin knew it made him happy. “Martha Jane said to her mother she was going to run over there to Everett’s place and ask to see if he was shipping any of her mohair. She said he bought two woolsacks that were hers. I mean separate from her mother and daddy’s. Now that don’t make sense to me. You know, ‘Oh I think I’ll just drop in and visit with my woolsacks.’ Like they were people. Woolsacks weigh four hundred pounds and they ain’t people. But there it is. Everett’s probably lonely out there, has been for years, just him and the boy. And his wife deader than Santa Ana.”