Brad Watson - Miss Jane

All she really had to worry about was preparing her garden and making it good the following summer. She used money from her father’s final crop and cattle sales to get through the winter, although, it being only her, there wasn’t much cost. She kept her insurance money in a safe-deposit box in town. Days, she could take walks, and talk to Harris or Moss, or Emmalene, or Mister if she caught him out and about. Sometimes she ran into him in the woods, her walking, him hunting with his mutt dog for squirrels. He was still skinny and comical. Even though they’d been childhood friends, he always took his hat off when he spoke to her. He seemed a bit of a rascal, even so, and she didn’t doubt what Hattie had told about his rather active nightlife in town. It being still winter, he would disappear down to there when he could, and when he came back Mr. Harris his grandfather would be cloudy for a few days about it.

She discovered, on a dark shelf in the back of the shed beside her father’s still, several jars of his apple brandy. Had her mother not even known it was there? Jane would have a little, sometimes, in the evenings on the porch or beside the kitchen stove in winter.

She asked Dr. Thompson if he would recommend a good radio, and the next time he visited he simply brought her one. She set it up in the kitchen, as the only electric outlet was in the bulb socket there. Sometimes she convinced him to come by and stay for dinner, if he had stopped by earlier in the day on his rounds. They would have a little of her father’s apple brandy afterward, and listen to a program. Then he would make his way home before too late. If she thought he’d had too much to drink during the day, which was rare enough, she kept on him until he agreed to sleep in her parents’ old room across the breezeway. Always, she would hear his car or truck crank up before she could even rise to make coffee, and hear him grinding off down the drive and out onto the road.

Sometimes she would stop in at his house and stay for supper there. Hattie was always glad to see her. She had never married, never had another child. She had grown stout, like her mother Emmalene, but unlike Emmalene she was of a lighter disposition. Jane supposed her life here, as the doctor’s housekeeper and helper, was a good bit easier than the life her mother had led growing up and growing old, a midwife and the wife of a sharecropper. Well, of course it was.

She went into town often enough that people began to be friendly (beyond the general sense) to her, speak to her by name, know what she liked to order in the cafés. She would fast beforehand as always, so as not to worry about that. And so they were relatively normal outings. Driving her yellow coupe in her high fog was a kind of dreamy delight. She drove slowly, the world going by like a slow-motion moving picture in color.

Mercury had become populous enough that she was not thought strange for appearing only now and then. Even the somewhat scary-looking woman who ran the ticket booth at the movie theater, pale and skinny with garish makeup, knew her and made small talk. The woman had the voice of a crow. The Phipps couple who owned and ran the Triangle Restaurant were so nice to her — they had known her father — she often had to argue before they would let her pay for a meal. She threatened to stop coming if they didn’t stop doing that, and they laughed and complied.

She never ate or drank much, in case she wanted to linger in town a little longer, later.

It was inevitable that men would start to notice her. She wasn’t the greatest beauty, not as pretty as she’d been as a girl, but she wasn’t plain and certainly not ugly, so she noticed a fair number of men taking notice of her. And they would make eye contact, smile, nod, tip a hat, say, “Morning,” or “Afternoon.” She learned to give the faintest smile and nod in return, so as not to encourage anyone if she could help it.

But one man started to stand out, and she thought he might be running into her — or passing by, she supposed — on purpose. Then he seemed to show up wherever she had her lunch. Whether the Triangle, or Schoenhof’s, Pointer’s Grill, the diner in Woolworth’s, he seemed to show up soon after she’d taken a seat — generally she sat at the counter, being alone — and sat a few stools from her, and if she glanced over he would catch her eye, smile, and nod. He was a slim gentleman, somewhat older than her but hard to say how much, as he had a young face even though his short-clipped hair was beginning to show some gray. He wore eyeglasses, the small and round wire-rimmed kind. Clean-shaven. Nice suit. His hands, she noticed once, were slim and looked strong without bulk. Hands used to handling things but not workingman’s hands.

Finally one day as she left the grill he came out behind her and said, “Excuse me, Miss Chisolm?”

She startled. How did he know her name? Which she asked him.

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I asked Mrs. Phipps.” He held out his hand. “My name is Gordon Ray, I work at Citizens Bank. I knew your father, and was sorry to hear of his passing.”

“Thank you,” Jane said. “Did you do business with my father?”

“Not much. I was just a teller back then. Before everything got so hard. We’re lucky to still be in business, I guess.”

“Yes. Well, my father wasn’t so keen on banks there toward the end, I guess.”

“No one was, Miss Chisolm.”

They stood there awkwardly for a moment. She emboldened herself and took a good, frank look at him then. He was handsome in a clean, precise, and conservative way. His eyes seemed intelligent and even kind. But she was wary of what seemed his persistent interest in her. She sensed he was a man who would be kind to a woman. But the question was always there: What did he, or would he, expect in the long run?

“Well, it was good to meet you, Mr. Ray.”

“Gordon, please.”

“Well, you can call me Jane, then. I have noticed you around.”

“Yes.” He laughed, a bit awkward. “Not a whole lot of options in the lunch department downtown, I guess. And I’m not married so I usually eat out at noon.”

“Yes.”

“And you? Do you live in town?”

“No, I live on my family’s farm, but the sharecroppers are doing all the farming these days, so I’m free to come in every now and then.”

“Would you ever like to stay for dinner? I would be honored to treat.”

She hesitated. But then her family’s tendency to be direct won out.

“Mr. Ray, I must tell you that I have never been on a date with a man in my life, dinner date or whatever kind of date.”

He kind of laughed.

“Better late than never.” Then added, “Truth is, I haven’t had a whole lot of dates myself.”

Jane looked at him. Yes, he was the friendly, awkward type.

“Living up in the country as I do, I have to be home early,” she said. “Or in any case I don’t like to arrive near or after dark.”

“I eat early,” Gordon Ray said.

All right. She pushed the family bluntness further.

“Mr. Ray, have you not heard anything about me? There must be lots of single young women in this town you could ask out to dinner.”

“Not as many as you might think, Miss Chisolm,” he said, with a kind of wan smile. “Especially if, like me, you don’t put on the he-man act. I come from Tennessee, and believe me I’m all man, but I’m not the kind to go strutting around like some circus wrestler, if you know what I mean. I’m a quiet type. Sometimes Southern women, if you’ll forgive me, don’t quite know what to make of men like me. Sometimes they get the wrong idea. But I assure you I like women very much.”

She stared at him for a second, then laughed, and he joined in.

“Well, I got your dander up, didn’t I?” she said. “But you didn’t answer my question.”