Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

But I’d go back to my lawful spouse! Miss Callie hollers at me through the bars. You or I or the man in the moon got no business living in that little hot upstairs room with a western exposure at Mrs. Judge O’Leary’s for all the pride on earth, not in August.

After work I was always staying to cut the grass in Mrs. Judge’s backyard, so it would be cooler for Bella. It kept the fleas away from her a little. None of it did much good. The heat held on. After I went back to the Starks, the men were playing, still playing croquet with a few little girls, and the women had taken off to themselves, stretched out on the screen porch. They called Maideen, I sent her in to them. It was the long Mississippi evening, the waiting till it was cool enough to eat. The voice of Jinny’s mama carried — I heard it — her reminiscent one — but the evening was quiet, very hot and still.

Somebody called, You’re dead on Lonnie. It was just a little Williams girl in pigtails.

I may have answered with a joke. I felt lighthearted, almost not serious at all, really addressing a child, as I lifted my mallet — the one with the red band that had always been mine. I brought Dugan to earth with it. He went down and shook the ground, fanning the air as he went. He toppled and sighed. Then I beat his whole length and his head with that soft girl’s hair and all the schemes, beat him without stopping my mallet till every bone and little bone, all the way down to the little bones in the hand, flew to pieces. I beat Lonnie Dugan till there was nothing to know there. And I proved the male body — it has a too certain, too special shape to it not to be hurt — could be finished and done away with — with one good loud blow after another — Jinny could be taught that. I looked at Dugan down there. And his blue eyes remained unharmed. Just as sometimes bubbles a child blows seem the most impervious things, and grass blades will go through them and they still reflect the world, give it back unbroken. Dugan I declare was dead.

“Now watch.”

Dugan said that. He spoke with no pain. Of course he never felt pain, never had time to. But that absurd, boyish tone of competition was in his voice. It had always been a mystery, now it was a deceit. Dugan — born nothing. Dugan — the other boy at the dance, the other man in the bank, the other sweetheart in Sabina, Jinny’s other man — it was together he and I made up the choice. Even then it was hard to believe — we were the choice in everything. But if that was over, settled — how could it open again, the destroyed mouth of Dugan? And I heard him say “Now watch.” He was dead on the ruined grass. But he had risen up. Just then he gave one of the fat little Williams girls a spank. I could see it and not hear it, the most familiar sound in the world.

There was that breathless stillness, and the sky changing the way a hand would pass over it. And I should have called it out then —All is disgrace! Human beings’ cries would swell in the last of evening like this and cross the grass in the yard before the light changes, if only they cried. Our grass in August is like the floor under the sea, and we walk on it slowly playing, and the sky turns green before dark. We don’t say anything the others remember.

But at our feet the shadows faded out light into the pale twilight and the locusts sang in long waves, O-E, O-E. Sweat ran down my back, arms, and legs, branching like some upside-down tree.

Then, “You’ll all come in!” They were calling from the porch — the well-known yellow lamps suddenly all went on. They called us in their shrill women’s voices, Jinny and all and her mama. “Fools, you’re playing in the dark! Come to supper!”

Somebody bumped into me in the sudden blindness of the yard. We laughed at their voracious voices. Across the dark the porch of women waited. It was like a long boat to me, or a box lighted up from within. But I was hungry.

I’d go down to Mrs. Judge O’Leary’s to sleep in my little western room — that’s the house where Mrs. Judge and the three other Sabina schoolteachers sit on the porch. Each evening to avoid them I ran through porch and hall both, like a man through the pouring rain. In the big dark backyard, full of pecan trees, moonlit, Bella opened her eyes and looked at me. They showed the moon. If she drank water, she vomited it up — yet she went with effort to her pan and drank again. I held her. Poor Bella. I thought she suffered from a tumor, and stayed with her most of the night.

Mother said, Son, I noticed that old pistol of your father’s in your nice coat pocket, what do you want with that old thing, your father never cared for it. Not any robbers coming to the bank that I know of. Son, if you’d just saved your money you could take yourself a little trip to the coast. I’d go with you. They always have a breeze at Gulfport, nearly always .

When you get to Jinny’s, there are yuccas and bare ground — it looks like some old playground, with the house back out of sight. Just the sharp, over-grown yuccas with up and down them rays of spiderwebs glinting in the light — as if they wore dresses. And back up in the shade is a little stone statue, all pockmarked now, of a dancing girl with a finger to her chin. Jinny stole that from a Vicksburg park once and her mama let her keep it.

Maideen said, “Are you taking me in yonder? I wish you wouldn’t.”

I looked down and saw my hand on the gate, and said “Wait. I’ve lost a button.” I showed my loose sleeve to Maideen. I felt all at once solemn — fateful — ready to shed tears.

“Why, I’ll sew you one on, if you stop by my house,” Maideen said. She touched my sleeve for an instant. A chameleon ran up a leaf, and held there panting. “Then Mama can see you. She’d be so glad to have you stay to supper.”

I opened the little old gate. I caught a whiff of the sour pears on the ground, the smell of August. I had not told Maideen I was ever coming to supper at any time, or seeing her mama.

“Oh, Jinny can sew it on now,” I said.

“Oh, I can?” Jinny said. She had of course been listening to me all the time from the half-hidden path. She looked out from under her shade-hat. She has the face, she has the threatening stare of a prankster — about to curtsey to you. Don’t you think it’s the look of a woman that loves dogs and horses best, and long trips away she never takes? “Come in before I forget, then,” Jinny said.

We went ahead of Maideen. There in the flower beds walked the same robins, where the sprinkler had been. Once again, we went in the house by the back door. We took hands. We stepped on Tellie’s patch of mint — the yellow cat went around the corner — the back door knob was as hot as the hand to the touch, and on the step, impeding the feet of two people going in together, the fruit jars with the laborious cuttings rooting in water—“Watch out for Mama’s—!” That had happened a thousand times, the way we went in. As a thousand bees droned and burrowed in the pears that lay on the ground.

As Mama Stark almost ran over me, she shrank with a cry, and started abruptly up the stairs — bosom lifted — her shadow trotted up beside her like a nosy bear. But she could never get to the top without turning. She came down again and held up a finger at me. Her voice… Randall. Let me tell you about a hand I held yesterday. My partner was Amanda Mackey and you know she always plays her own hand with no more regard for her partner than you have. Well, she opened with a spade and Fanny doubled. I held: a singleton spade five clubs to the king queen five hearts to the king and two little diamonds. I said two clubs, Gert Gish two diamonds, Amanda two spades, all passed. And when I laid down my hand Amanda said, O partner! Why didn’t you bid your hearts! I said Hardly. At the level of three with the opponents doubling for a takeout. It developed of course she was two suited — six spades to the ace jack and four hearts to the ace jack ten, also my ace of clubs. Now Randall. It would have been just as easy for Amanda when she opened her mouth a second time to bid three hearts. But no! She could see only her own hand and so she took us down two, and we could have made five hearts. Now do you think I should have bid three hearts? — I said, You were justified not to, Mama Stark, and she gave me a nod. Then she glared as if I had slapped her. How well she could turn up her discontent to outrage again, and go on upstairs.