Joyce Oates - The Gravedigger’s Daughter

Tignor was driving now more swiftly along Ferry, turning off onto Main. At the top of the steep hill the General Washington Hotel glittered with lights, amid blocks of mostly darkened buildings.

Rebecca said, “Not that hotel, Tignor. You know why.”

“Shit, then. We’ll go somewhere else.”

“Not any hotel, Tignor.”

In the fleeting light from the street, Rebecca saw him staring at her. She might have reached over to slap him. She might have laughed at him, mocked him. She saw his surprise, his hurt, slow-dawning as physical pain. And his resentment of her, the obdurate resisting female. His jaws tightened, yet he forced himself to smile.

“You’re the boss, then. Sure.”

He drove then to Sandusky’s, a tavern on the river. It was two miles away and during the drive he said nothing to Rebecca, nor did she speak to him.

Rebecca thought calmly He would not touch me . He would not want to hurt me .

As soon as they entered the smoky interior of the tavern, men called out to Tignor: “Hey, Tignor! H’lo, man”-“Tignor! How the hell are you?” Rebecca sensed how it gratified Tignor, to be so recognized, and well liked. Tignor swaggered, and called back greetings. Of course he knew Sandusky, the tavern owner; he knew the bartenders. He shook hands, he thumped shoulders. He declined invitations to join men at the bar, where they were eager to have him. He did not trouble to introduce Rebecca, who hung back, at a little distance. She saw the men assessing her, and liking what they saw.

Tignor’s girl .

A new, young one .

Some of these Milburn men must have known her, or of her. The Schwart girl. The gravedigger’s daughter. Yet she was older now, not a child. In Niles Tignor’s flashy company, they would not recognize her.

“C’mere, honey. Where it’s quiet.”

Tignor brought Rebecca to sit in a booth, away from the bar. A string of festive green and red lights, left over from Christmas, sparkled overhead. Tignor ordered Black Horse draft ale for himself, two glasses. And a Coke for Rebecca. She would drink ale if she wished, from Tignor’s glass. He hoped so.

“Hungry? Christ, I could eat a horse.”

Tignor ordered two platters of roast beef sandwiches, fried onions, french fries and ketchup. He wanted potato chips, too. And salty peanuts. Dill pickles, a plate of dill pickles. He spoke to Rebecca now in his easy, bantering way. In this place, where others might be observing them, he did not wish to be perceived as a man ill at ease with his girl. He talked of his recent travels through the state, in the Hudson Valley, south into the Catskill region, but very generally. He would tell her nothing crucial of himself, Rebecca knew. In Beardstown, when there had been the opportunity, he had not. He had gorged himself on food, drink, and Rebecca’s body, he had wanted nothing more.

“Last two nights, I was in Rochester. At the big hotel there, the Statler. I heard a jazz quartet in a nightclub. D’ya like jazz? Don’t know jazz? Well, someday. I’ll take you there, maybe. To Rochester.”

Rebecca smiled. “I hope so, yes.”

In the flickering lights Rebecca was a beautiful girl, perhaps. Since Tignor had made love to her, she had become more beautiful. He was powerfully drawn to her, remembering. He resented it, this power the girl had over him, to distract him. For he did not want to think of the past. He did not want the past, of even a few weeks ago, to exert any influence upon him, in the present. He would have said that to be so influenced, as a man, was to be weak, unmanly. He wanted to live in the present, solely. Yet he could not comprehend it, how Rebecca held herself apart from him, now. She was smiling, but wary. Her olive-dark skin had a fervid glow, her eyes were remarkably clear, the lashes dark, thick, with a curious oblique slyness.

“So! You don’t love me, eh? Not like last time.”

Tignor, leaning on his elbows, was wistful, half-joking, but his eyes were anxious. Not that Tignor wanted to love any woman but he wanted to be loved, very badly.

Rebecca said, “I do, Tignor. I do love you.”

She spoke in a strange, exultant, unsettling voice. The noise in the tavern was such, Tignor could pretend not to have heard. His pale flat eyes went opaque. A dull flush rose into his face. If he’d heard Rebecca, he had no idea what to make of her remark.

The roast beef platters arrived. Tignor ate his food, and much of Rebecca’s. He finished both glasses of ale, and ordered a third. He lurched from the booth to use the men’s room-“Gotta take a leak, honey. Be right back.”

Crude! He was crude, maddening. He went away from the booth, but was not right back.

Rebecca, idly chewing stumps of greasy french fries, saw Tignor dropping by other booths, and at the bar. A half-dozen men at the bar seemed to know him. There was a woman with puffed-up blond hair in a turquoise sweater, who persisted in slipping an arm around Tignor’s neck as she spoke earnestly with him. And there was the tavern owner Sandusky with whom Tignor had a lengthy conversation punctuated by explosions of laughter. He wants to hide among them Rebecca thought. As if he is one of them .

She felt the triumph of possession, that she knew the man intimately. None of these others knew Tignor, as she knew him.

Yet he stayed away from her, purposefully. She knew, she knew what he was doing; he had not telephoned her in weeks, he had forgotten about her. She knew, and would accept it. She would come like a dog when he snapped his fingers, but only initially: he could not make her do anything more.

When Tignor returned to Rebecca, carrying a draft ale, his face was damply flushed and he walked with the mincing precision of a man on a tilting deck. His eyes snatched at hers, in that curious admixture of anxiety and resentment. “Sorry, baby. Got involved over there.” Tignor did not sound very apologetic but he leaned over to kiss Rebecca’s cheek. He touched her hair, stroked her hair. His hand lingered on her shoulder. He said, “Know what, I’m gonna get you some earrings, R’becca. Gold hoop earrings. That Gypsy-look, that’s so sexy.”

Rebecca touched her earlobes. Katy had pierced Rebecca’s ears with a hat pin “sanitized” by holding it in a candle flame, so that she would wear pierced earrings, but the tiny slit-wounds had not healed well.

Rebecca said, unexpectedly, “I don’t need earrings, Tignor. But thank you.”

“A girl who ”don’t need‘ earrings, Jesus…“ Tignor sat across from Rebecca, heavily. In a gesture of drunken well-being he ran his hands robustly through his hair, and rubbed at his reddened eyelids. He said, genially, as if he had only now thought of it, ”Somebody was telling me, R’becca, you’re a, what?-“ward of the state.”“

Rebecca frowned, not liking this. God damn, people talking of her, to Niles Tignor!

“I am a ward of Chautauqua County. Because my parents are dead, and I’m under eighteen.”

Never had Rebecca uttered those words before.

My parents are dead .

For she had not been thinking of Jacob and Anna Schwart as dead, exactly. They awaited her in the old stone cottage in the cemetery.

Tignor, drinking, was waiting for Rebecca to say more, so she told him, with schoolgirl brightness, “A woman, a former schoolteacher, was appointed my guardian by the county court. I lived with her for a while. But now I’m out of school, and working, I don’t need a guardian. I am ”self-supporting.“ And when I’m eighteen, I won’t be a ward any longer.”

“When’s that?”

“In May.”

Tignor smiled, but he was troubled, uneasy. Seventeen: so young!

Tignor was twice that age, at least.