William Maxwell: So Long, See You Tomorrow

When Cletus walked into the cow barn the cats ran to greet him. His father was already there, milking Flossie. Victor should have been milking the cow on the other side of him but he had gone off on a bender, even though it wasn't a national holiday. Cletus picked up a milk bucket and stool and sat down. He tried to adjust the rhythm of his squirt- squirt to his father's. Old Bess moved her feet restlessly and he said, "So, boss." The cats rubbed against his ankles, purring, but he didn't feel them. The night before, the terrible voice had given him something new to worry about: 1 can walk out of this house any time I feel like it, taking the boys with vie. He fell back into the same deep sleep as if nothing had happened, but this morning, while he was mooning over his cereal, there it was.

He saw that Blackie was sitting with his pink mouth stretched wide open and he squirted a stream of milk into it. Sixteen years old that cat was, and his ears all cut up from fighting, and hardly a tooth in his head.

She won't do it, Cletus thought. But why shouldn't she? What was there to stop her, except fear of his father, and she wasn't afraid, of anything or anybody.

The level of milk rose in the two pails. His father whistled the same sad tune he whistled all day long. When he stood up, Cletus said, "Last night I heard something."

"Outside?"

"No."

"Shouldn't listen to conversations that don't concern you."

"I wasn't trying to listen."

"I see. Well, what did you hear?" "Mama said, she said she might move into town and take me and Wayne with her."

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Pa.. "

"Yes, son."

"Promise me you won't get sore if I say something?" He waited and there was no answer from the next stall. "Please don't argue with her about it, Pa."

"Why not? Do you want to move into town with her?"

"You know I don't. But you shouldn't have said you wouldn't let her do it. If you tell her she can't do something, then she has to do it."

"Why, you little fucker!"

The heavy hand shot out and sent him sprawling. What the boy had said was true, but a lot of difference that made. The bucket was overturned, a pool of milk began to spread along the barn floor. With his right ear roaring with pain and one whole side of his face gone numb, he picked himself up and drew the stool out from between the cow's legs and put the bucket under her. He managed not to cry, but his hands shook, and the milk squirted unevenly into the pail.

"The next time you try to tell me how to run my affairs it won't be just a clout on the head, I'll break your God damn back," Clarence Smith said. He picked up his stool and moved on to the adjoining stall and sat down and, with his head pressed against the cow's side, resumed his sad whistling.

The conversation didn't turn out the way the widow expected. She thought Lloyd Wilson would open his heart to her and instead he said, "Yes, well, I'll think about it," and picked up the Farmer's Almanac.

She paused in her crocheting and pushed the lamp closer to him. Either he didn't want to talk about it or he had something else on his mind that he couldn't bring himself to discuss with her. Maybe money troubles. Or it could be that Mrs. Stroud was making difficulty. She was not a very nice woman and had her nose into everything.

Clarence was fastening the pasture gate with a loop of wire when it came over him that she was gone. He broke into a run. In his mind he saw the note propped against the sugar bowl on the kitchen table. When he flung the door open she was standing at the stove, her hair damp with steam, stirring the clothes in the big copper boiler. They stared at each other a moment and then she said, "No, I'm still here."

When she did leave, six weeks later, he had no premonition of it.

He was informed, through the mail, by her lawyer, that any attempt to get in touch with her or with their children except through him could be considered as constituting harassment, and that whatever steps were necessary to protect her from it would be taken.

The next thing that happened was a notice from the county clerk's office: she was suing him for a divorce.

Shortly thereafter, Fern Smith sat in her lawyer's office discussing a notice she had received from Clarence's lawyer. It was out of their hands now. They had stopped shouting at each other and put their faith in legal counsel. With the result that how things could be made to look was what counted, not how they actually were.

The divorce proceedings and the cross bill were tried as a single case in the fall term of court. In the jury box and in the visitors' part of the courtroom were men Clarence Smith knew, and, averting his eyes from them, he had to sit and hear his most intimate life laid bare. He did not recognize the description of himself, and he wondered how Fern's lawyer could utter with such a ring of sincerity statements he must know had no foundation in truth. Or how she could sit there looking like a victim when it was she who had made it all come about. Her lawyer had found half a dozen witnesses who were pleased to testify to his bad temper — which surprised him. He had not known that he had any enemies. He had only one witness for his side, but he was counting on that one witness to establish the falsehood of everything that was said.

All but unrecognizable in a new suit and shaved by the barber, the hired man testified to "intimacies." He used other words that had been put in his mouth by Clarence's lawyer. On various occasions, he said, he had come upon the plaintiff and Wilson in an embrace or kissing, or with his hand inside her blouse. When his employer was off the property, Wilson would come to the house and the shade in the upstairs bedroom would be drawn and it would be an hour or more sometimes before he reappeared.

Pacing back and forth in front of the jury box, Fern Smith's lawyer spoke eloquently of the close ties that bound the two households together, and in particular of the friendship of the two men. Was it not a fact, was it not an incontrovertible fact that over a period of many years before the present discord arose, and with Clarence Smith's full knowledge and approval, Lloyd Wilson had frequently gone to the Smiths' house when Smith was off the premises? Before proceeding with the cross-examination, he would like to offer, as evidence bearing on the reliability of the witness's testimony, the fact that he was seldom without the smell of liquor on his breath, and that he had spent the night of July 4th in jail in an inebriated condition.

Clarence's lawyer leapt to his feet and exclaimed, "Your Honor, I object," and the judge said sourly, "Objection overruled."

Victor was easily trapped into saying things he did not mean, and that could not be true, and his confusion was such that the courtroom was moved to laughter again and again. After that, Clarence was called to the witness stand and placed under oath, and heard acts of his described that he could not truthfully deny. What Fern's lawyer did not tell the gentlemen of the jury was the provocation that led up to this violent behavior. And when Clarence tried to, he was instructed by the judge to confine his remarks to answering the questions put to him by counsel.

Nobody said, in court, that Clarence Smith was pierced to the heart by his wife's failure to love him, and it wouldn't have made any difference if they had.

The evening paper reported that Mrs. Fern Smith was granted a decree of divorce against her husband, on the grounds of extreme and repeated cruelty, the charges in his cross bill not being substantiated in the eyes of the jury. He was ordered to pay fifty dollars a month alimony, and she was granted custody of the children.