Papa liked him from the first, and though mama said Geraldine was too young, she didn’t make any ruckus about it. I cried at the wedding, and thought it was because the nights at the dancing pavilion were over, and because Geraldine and I would never lie cozy in the same bed again.
But as soon as Dan Rainey took over everything seemed to go right; he brought out the best in the land and maybe the best in us. Except when winter came on, and we’d be sitting round the fire, sometimes the heat, something made me feel just faint. I’d go stand in the yard with only my dress on, it was like I couldn’t feel the cold because I’d become a piece of it, and I’d close my eyes, waltz round and round, and one night, I didn’t hear him sneaking up, Dan Rainey caught me in his arms and danced me for a joke. Only it wasn’t such a joke.
He had feelings for me; way back in my head I’d known it from the start. But he didn’t say it, and I never asked him to; and it wouldn’t have come to anything provided Geraldine hadn’t lost her baby. That was in the spring.
She was mortally afraid of snakes, Geraldine, and it was seeing one that did it; she was collecting eggs, it was only a chicken snake, but it scared her so bad she dropped her baby four months too soon. I don’t know what happened to her—got cross and mean, got where she’d fly out about anything. Dan Rainey took the worst of it; he kept out of her way as much as he could; used to roll himself in a blanket and sleep down in the wheatfield.
I knew if I stayed there—so I went to Youfry and got Geraldine’s old job at the hotel. The dancing pavilion, it was the same as the summer before, and I was even prettier: one boy nearly killed another over who was going to buy me an orangeade. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself, but my mind wasn’t on it; at the hotel they asked where was my mind—always filling the sugar bowl with salt, giving people spoons to cut their meat.
I never went home the whole summer. When the time came—it was such a day as this, a fall day blue as eternity—I didn’t let them know I was coming, just got out of the coach and walked three miles through the wheat stacks till I found Dan Rainey. He didn’t speak a word, only plopped down and cried like a baby. I was that sorry for him, and loved him more than tongue can tell.”
Her cigarette had gone out. She seemed to have lost track of the story; or worse, thought better of finishing it. I wanted to stamp and whistle, the way rowdies do at the picture-show when the screen goes unexpectedly blank; and Riley, though less bald about it, was impatient too. He struck a match for her cigarette: starting at the sound, she remembered her voice again, but it was as if, in the interval, she’d traveled far ahead.
“So papa swore he’d shoot him. A hundred times Geraldine said tell us who it was and Dan here’ll take a gun after him. I laughed till I cried; sometimes the other way round. I said well I had no idea; there were five or six boys in Youfry could be the one, and how was I to know? Mama slapped my face when I said that. But they believed it; even after a while I think Dan Rainey believed it—wanted to anyway, poor unhappy fellow. All those months not stirring out of the house; and in the middle of it papa died.
They wouldn’t let me go to the funeral, they were so ashamed for anyone to see. It happened this day, with them off at the burial and me alone in the house and a sandy wind blowing rough as an elephant, that I got in touch with God.
I didn’t by any means deserve to be Chosen: up till then, mama’d had to coax me to learn my Bible verses; afterwards, I memorized over a thousand in less than three months. Well I was practicing a tune on the piano, and suddenly a window broke, the whole room turned topsy-turvy, then fell together again, and someone was with me, papa’s spirit I thought; but the wind died down peaceful as spring—He was there, and standing as He made me, straight, I opened my arms to welcome Him.
That was twenty-six years ago last February the third; I was sixteen, I’m forty-two now, and I’ve never wavered. When I had my baby I didn’t call Geraldine or Dan Rainey or anybody, only lay there whispering my verses one after the other and not a soul knew Danny was born till they heard him holler.
It was Geraldine named him that. He was hers, everyone thought so, and people round the countryside rode over to see her new baby, brought presents, some of them, and the men hit Dan Rainey on the back and told him what a fine son he had. Soon as I was able I moved thirty miles away to Stoneville, that’s a town double the size of Youfry and where they have a big mining camp.
Another girl and I, we started a laundry, and did a good business on account of in a mining town there’s mostly bachelors. About twice a month I went home to see Danny; I was seven years going back and forth; it was the only pleasure I had, and a strange one, considering how it tore me up every time: such a beautiful boy, there’s no describing. But Geraldine died for me to touch him: if I kissed him she’d come near to jumping out of her skin; Dan Rainey wasn’t much different, he was so scared I wouldn’t leave well enough alone. The last time I ever was home I asked him would he meet me in Youfry. Because for a crazy long while I’d had an idea, which was: if I could live it again, if I could bear a child that would be a twin to Danny.
But I was wrong to think it could have the same father. It would’ve been a dead child, born dead: I looked at Dan Rainey (it was the coldest day, we sat by the empty dancing pavilion, I remember he never took his hands out of his pockets) and sent him away without saying why it was I’d asked him to come. Then years spent hunting the likeness of him. One of the miners in Stoneville, he had the same freckles, yellow eyes; a goodhearted boy, he obliged me with Sam, my oldest.
As best I recall, Beth’s father was a dead ringer for Dan Rainey; but being a girl, Beth didn’t favor Danny. I forget to tell you that I’d sold my share of the laundry and gone to Texas—had restaurant work in Amarillo and Dallas. But it wasn’t until I met Mr. Honey that I saw why the Lord had chosen me and what my task was to be. Mr. Honey possessed the True Word; after I heard him preach that first time I went round to see him: we hadn’t talked twenty minutes than he said I’m going to marry you provided you’re not married a’ready. I said no I’m not married, but I’ve got some family; fact is, there was five by then. Didn’t faze him a bit.
We got married a week later on Valentine’s Day. He wasn’t a young man, and he didn’t look a particle like Dan Rainey; stripped of his boots he couldn’t make it to my shoulder; but when the Lord brought us together He knew certain what He was doing: we had Roy, then Pearl and Kate and Cleo and Little Homer—most of them born in that wagon you saw up there. We traveled all over the country carrying His Word to folks who’d never heard it before, not the way my man could tell it.
Now I must mention a sad circumstance, which is: I lost Mr. Honey. One morning, this was in a queer part of Louisiana, Cajun parts, he walked off down the road to buy some groceries: you know we never saw him again. He disappeared right into thin air. I don’t give a hoot what the police say; he wasn’t the kind to run out on his family; no sir it was foul play.”
“Or amnesia,” I said. “You forget everything, even your own name.”
“A man with the whole Bible on the tip of his tongue—would you say he was liable to forget something like his name? One of them Cajuns murdered him for his amethyst ring. Naturally I’ve known men since then; but not love. Lillie Ida, Laurel, the other kids, they happened like. Seems somehow I can’t get on without another life kicking under my heart: feel so sluggish otherwise.”
When the children were dressed, some with their clothes inside out, we returned to the tree where the older girls, bending over the fire, dried and combed their hair. In our absence Dolly had cared for the baby; she seemed now not to want to give it back: “I wish one of us had had a baby, my sister or Catherine,” and Sister Ida said yes, it was entertaining and a satisfaction too. We sat finally in a circle around the fire.
The stew was too hot
