MARY HOOD (1946–), a Georgia native, is the author of the novel Familiar Heat and two short story collections, How Far She Went, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and The Southern Review/Louisiana State University Short Fiction Award, and And Venus Is Blue, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Townsend Prize for Fiction, and the Dixie Council of Authors and Journalists Author-of-the-Year Award. A recipient of the Whiting Award, she was the John and Renée Grisham Southern Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi and has taught creative writing at Berry College; Reinhardt College; Centre College in Danville, Kentucky; and the University of Georgia.
They had quarreled all morning, squalled all summer about the incidentals: how tight the girl’s cut-off jeans were, the “Every Inch a Woman” T-shirt, her choice of music and how loud she played it, her practiced inattention, her sullen look. Her granny wrung out the last boiled dishcloth, pinched it to the line, giving the basin a sling and a slap, the water flying out in a scalding arc onto the Queen Anne’s lace by the path, never mind if it bloomed, that didn’t make it worth anything except to chiggers, but the girl would cut it by the everlasting armload and cherish it in the old churn, going to that much trouble for a weed but not bending once—unbegged—to pick the nearest bean; she was sulking now. Bored. Displaced.
“And what do you think happens to a chigger if nobody ever walks by his weed?” her granny asked, heading for the house with that sidelong uneager unanswered glance, hoping for what? The surprise gift of a smile? Nothing. The woman shook her head and said it. “Nothing.” The door slammed behind her. Let it.
“I hate it here!” the girl yelled then. She picked up a stick and broke it and threw the pieces—one from each hand—at the laundry drying in the noon. Missed. Missed.
Then she turned on her bare, haughty heel and set off high-shouldered into the heat, quick but not far, not far enough—no road was that long—only as far as she dared. At the gate, a rusty chain swinging between two lichened posts, she stopped, then backed up the raw drive to make a run at the barrier, lofting, clearing it clean, her long hair wild in the sun. Triumphant, she looked back at the house where she caught at the dark window her granny’s face in its perpetual eclipse of disappointment, old at fifty. She stepped back, but the girl saw her.
“You don’t know me!” the girl shouted, chin high, and ran till her ribs ached.
• • •
As she rested in the rattling shade of the willows, the little dog found her. He could be counted on. He barked all the way, and squealed when she pulled the burr from his ear. They started back to the house for lunch. By then the mailman had long come and gone in the old ruts, leaving the one letter folded now to fit the woman’s apron pocket.
If bad news darkened her granny’s face, the girl ignored it. Didn’t talk at all, another of her distancings, her defiances. So it was as they ate that the woman summarized, “Your daddy wants you to cash in the plane ticket and buy you something. School clothes. For here.”
Pale, the girl stared, defenseless only an instant before blurting out, “You’re lying.”
The woman had to stretch across the table to leave her handprint on that blank cheek. She said, not caring if it stung or not, “He’s been planning it since he sent you here.”
“I could turn this whole house over, dump it! Leave you slobbering over that stinking jealous dog in the dust!” The girl trembled with the vision, with the strength it gave her. It made her laugh. “Scatter the Holy Bible like confetti and ravel the crochet into miles of stupid string! I could! I will! I won’t stay here!” But she didn’t move, not until her tears rose to meet her color, and then to escape the shame of minding so much she fled. Just headed away, blind. It didn’t matter, this time, how far she went.
• • •
The woman set her thoughts against fretting over their bickering, just went on unalarmed with chores, clearing off after the uneaten meal, bringing in the laundry, scattering corn for the chickens, ladling manure tea onto the porch flowers. She listened though. She always had been a listener. It gave her a cocked look. She forgot why she had gone into the girl’s empty room, that ungirlish, tenuous lodging place with its bleak order, its ready suitcases never unpacked, the narrow bed, the contested radio on the windowsill. The woman drew the cracked shade down between the radio and the August sun. There wasn’t anything else to do.
It was after six when she tied on her rough oxfords and walked down the drive and dropped the gate chain and headed back to the creosoted shed where she kept her tools. She took a hoe for snakes, a rake, shears to trim the grass where it grew, and seed in her pocket to scatter where it never had grown at all. She put the tools and her gloves and the bucket in the trunk of the old Chevy, its prime and rust like an Appaloosa’s spots through the chalky white finish. She left the trunk open and the tool handles sticking out. She wasn’t going far.
The heat of the day had broken, but the air was thick, sultry, weighted with honeysuckle in second bloom and the Nu-Grape scent of kudzu. The maple and poplar leaves turned over, quaking, silver. There wouldn’t be any rain. She told the dog to stay, but he knew a trick. He stowed away when she turned her back, leaped right into the trunk with the tools, then gave himself away with exultant barks. Hearing him, her court jester, she stopped the car and welcomed him into the front seat beside her. Then they went on. Not a mile from her gate she turned onto the blue gravel of the cemetery lane, hauled the gearshift into reverse to whoa them, and got out to take the idle walk down to her buried hopes, bending all along to rout out a handful of weeds from between the markers of old acquaintance. She stood there and read, slow. The dog whined at her hem; she picked him up and rested her chin on his head, then he wriggled and whined to run free, contrary and restless as a child.
The crows called strong and bold MOM! MOM! A trick of the ear to hear it like that. She knew it was the crows, but still she looked around. No one called her that now. She was done with that. And what was it worth anyway? It all came to this: solitary weeding. The sinful fumble of flesh, the fear, the listening for a return that never came, the shamed waiting, the unanswered prayers, the perjury on the certificate—hadn’t she lain there weary of the whole lie and it only beginning? and a voice telling her, “Here’s your baby, here’s your girl,” and the swaddled package meaning no more to her than an extra anything, something store-bought, something she could take back for a refund.
“Tie her to the fence and give her a bale of hay,” she had murmured, drugged, and they teased her, excused her for such a welcoming, blaming the anesthesia, but it went deeper than that; she knew, and the baby knew: there was no love in the begetting. That was the secret, unforgivable, that not another good thing could ever make up for, where all the bad had come from, like a visitation, a punishment. She knew that was why Sylvie had been wild, had gone to earth so early, and before dying had made this child in sudden wedlock, a child who would be just like her, would carry the hurting on into another generation. A matter of time. No use raising her hand. But she had raised her hand. Still wore on its palm the memory of the sting of the collision with the girl’s cheek; had she broken her jaw? Her heart? Of course not. She said it aloud: “Takes more than that.”
She went to work then, doing what she could with her old tools. She pecked the clay on Sylvie’s grave, new-looking, unhealed after years. She tried again, scattering seeds from her pocket, every last possible one of them. Off in the west she could hear the pulpwood cutters sawing through another acre across the lake. Nearer, there was the racket of motorcycles laboring cross-country, insect-like, distracting.
She took her bucket to the well and hung it on the pump. She had half filled it when the bikers roared up, right down the blue gravel, straight at her. She let the bucket overflow, staring. On the back of one of the machines was the girl. Sylvie’s girl! Her bare arms wrapped around the shirtless man riding between her thighs. They were first. The second biker rode alone. She studied their strangers’ faces as they circled her. They were the enemy, all of them. Laughing. The girl was laughing too, laughing like her mama did. Out in the middle of nowhere the girl had found these two men, some moth-musk about her drawing them (too soon!) to what? She shouted it: “What in God’s—” They roared off without answering her, and the bucket of water tipped over, spilling its stain blood-dark on the red dust.
The dog went wild barking, leaping after them, snapping at the tires, and there was no calling him down. The bikers made a wide circuit of the churchyard, then roared straight across the graves, leaping the ditch and landing upright on the road again, heading off toward the reservoir.
Furious, she ran to her car, past the barking dog, this time leaving him behind, driving after them, horn blowing nonstop, to get back what was not theirs. She drove after them knowing what they did not know, that all the roads beyond that point dead-ended. She surprised them, swinging the Impala across their path, cutting them off; let them hit it! They stopped. She got out, breathing hard, and said, when she could, “She’s underage.” Just that. And put out her claiming hand with an authority that made the girl’s arms drop from the man’s insolent waist and her legs tremble.
“I was just riding,” the girl said, not looking up.
Behind them the sun was heading on toward down. The long shadows of the pines drifted back and forth in the same breeze that puffed the distant sails on the lake. Dead limbs creaked and clashed overhead like the antlers of locked and furious beasts.
“Sheeeut,” the lone rider said. “I told you.” He braced with his muddy boot and leaned out from his machine to spit. The man the girl had been riding with had the invading sort of eyes the woman had spent her lifetime bolting doors against. She met him now, face to face.
“Right there, missy,” her granny said, pointing behind her to the car.
The girl slid off the motorcycle and stood halfway between her choices. She started slightly at the poosh! as he popped another top and chugged the beer in one uptilting of his head. His eyes never left the woman’s. When he was through, he tossed the can high, flipping it end over end. Before it hit the ground he had his pistol out and, firing once, winged it into the lake.
“Freaking lucky shot,” the other one grudged.
“I don’t need luck,” he said. He sighted down the barrel of the gun at the woman’s head. “POW!” he yelled, and when she recoiled, he laughed. He swung around to the girl; he kept aiming the gun, here, there, high, low, all around. “Y’all settle it,” he said, with a shrug.
The girl had to understand him then, had to know him, had to know better. But still she hesitated. He kept looking at her, then away.
“She’s fifteen,” her granny said. “You can go to jail.”
“You can go to hell,” he said.
“Probably will,” her granny told him. “I’ll save you a seat by the fire.” She took the girl by the arm and drew her to the car; she backed up, swung around, and headed out the road toward the churchyard for her tools and dog. The whole way the girl said nothing, just hunched against the far door, staring hard-eyed out at the pines going past.
The woman finished watering the seed in, and collected her tools. As she worked, she muttered, “It’s your own kin buried here, you might have the decency to glance this way one time . . .” The girl was finger-tweezing her eyebrows in the side mirror. She didn’t look around as the dog and the woman got in. Her granny shifted hard, sending the tools clattering in the trunk.
When they came to the main road, there were the men. Watching for them. Waiting for them. They kicked their machines into life and followed, close, bumping them, slapping the old fenders, yelling. The girl gave a wild glance around at the one by her door and said, “Gran’ma?” and as he drew his pistol, “Gran’ma!” just as the gun nosed into the open window. She frantically cranked the glass up between her and the weapon, and her granny, seeing, spat, “Fool!” She never had been one to pray for peace or rain. She stamped the accelerator right to the floor.
The motorcycles caught up. Now she braked, hard, and swerved off the road into an alley between the pines, not even wide enough for the school bus, just a fire scrape that came out a quarter mile from her own house, if she could get that far. She slewed on the pine straw, then righted, tearing along the dark tunnel through the woods. She had for the time being bested them; they were left behind. She was winning. Then she hit the wallow where the tadpoles were already five weeks old. The Chevy plowed in and stalled. When she got it cranked again, they were stuck. The tires spattered mud three feet up the near trunks as she tried to spin them out, to rock them out. Useless. “Get out and run!” she cried, but the trees were too close on the passenger side. The girl couldn’t open her door. She wasted precious time having to crawl out under the steering wheel. The woman waited but the dog ran on.
They struggled through the dusky woods, their pace slowed by the thick straw and vines. Overhead, in the last light, the martins were reeling free and sure after their prey.
“Why? Why?” the girl gasped, as they lunged down the old deer trail. Behind them they could hear shots, and glass breaking as the men came to the bogged car. The woman kept on running, swatting their way clear through the shoulder-high weeds. They could see the Greer cottage, and made for it. But it was ivied-over, padlocked, the woodpile dry-rotting under its tarp, the electric meterbox empty on the pole. No help there.
The dog, excited, trotted on, yelping, his lips whiteflecked. He scented the lake and headed that way, urging them on with thirsty yips. On the clay shore, treeless, deserted, at the utter limit of land, they stood defenseless, listening to the men coming on, between them and home. The woman pressed her hands to her mouth, stifling her cough. She was exhausted. She couldn’t think.
“We can get under!” the girl cried suddenly, and pointed toward the Greers’ dock, gap-planked, its walkway grounded on the mud. They splashed out to it, wading in, the woman grabbing up the telltale, tattletale dog in her arms. They waded out to the far end and ducked under. There was room between the foam floats for them to crouch neck-deep.
The dog wouldn’t hush, even then; never had yet, and there wasn’t time to teach him. When the woman realized that, she did what she had to do. She grabbed him whimpering; held him; held him under till the struggle ceased and the bubbles rose silver from his fur. They crouched there then, the two of them, submerged to the shoulders, feet unsteady on the slimed lake bed. They listened. The sky went from rose to ocher to violet in the cracks over their heads. The motorcycles had stopped now. In the silence there was the glissando of locusts, the dry crunch of boots on the flinty beach, their low man-talk drifting as they prowled back and forth. One of them struck a match.
“—they in these woods we could burn ’em out.”
The wind carried their voices away into the pines. Some few words eddied back.
“—lippy old smartass do a little work on her knees besides praying—”
Laughter. It echoed off the deserted house. They were getting closer.
One of them strode directly out to the dock, walked on the planks over their heads. They could look up and see his boot soles. He was the one with the gun. He slapped a mosquito on his bare back and cursed. The carp, roused by the troubling of the waters, came nosing around the dock, guzzling and snorting. The girl and her granny held still, so still. The man fired his pistol into the shadows, and a wounded fish thrashed, dying. The man knelt and reached for it, chuffing out his beery breath. He belched. He pawed the lake for the dead fish, cursing as it floated out of reach. He shot it again, firing at it till it sank and the gun was empty. Cursed that too. He stood then and unzipped and relieved himself of some of the beer. They had to listen to that. To know that about him. To endure that, unprotesting.
Back and forth on shore the other one ranged, restless. He lit another cigarette. He coughed. He called, “Hey! They got away, man, that’s all. Don’t get your shorts in a wad. Let’s go.”
“Yeah.” He finished. He zipped. He stumped back across the planks and leaped to shore, leaving the dock tilting amid widening ripples. Underneath, they waited.
The bike cranked. The other ratcheted, ratcheted, then coughed, caught, roared. They circled, cut deep ruts, slung gravel, and went. Their roaring died away and away. Crickets resumed and a near frog bic-bic-bicked.
Under the dock, they waited a little longer to be sure. Then they ducked below the water, scraped out from under the pontoon, and came up into free air, slogging toward shore. It had seemed warm enough in the water. Now they shivered. It was almost night. One streak of light still stood reflected on the darkening lake, drew itself thinner, narrowing into a final cancellation of day. A plane winked its way west.
The girl was trembling. She ran her hands down her arms and legs, shedding water like a garment. She sighed, almost a sob. The woman held the dog in her arms; she dropped to her knees upon the random stones and murmured, private, haggard, “Oh, honey,” three times, maybe all three times for the dog, maybe once for each of them. The girl waited, watching. Her granny rocked the dog like a baby, like a dead child, rocked slower and slower and was still.
“I’m sorry,” the girl said then, avoiding the dog’s inert, empty eye.
“It was him or you,” her granny said, finally, looking up. Looking her over. “Did they mess with you? With your britches? Did they?”
“No!” Then, quieter, “No, ma’am.”
When the woman tried to stand up she staggered, lightheaded, clumsy with the freight of the dog. “No, ma’am,” she echoed, fending off the girl’s “Let me.” And she said again, “It was him or you. I know that. I’m not going to rub your face in it.” They saw each other as well as they could in that failing light, in any light.
The woman started toward home, saying, “Around here, we bear our own burdens.” She led the way along the weedy shortcuts. The twilight bleached the dead limbs of the pines to bone. Insects sang in the thickets, silencing at their oncoming.
“We’ll see about the car in the morning,” the woman said. She bore her armful toward her own moth-ridden dusk-to-dawn security light with that country grace she had always had when the earth was reliably progressing underfoot. The girl walked close behind her, exactly where she walked, matching her pace, matching her stride, close enough to put her hand forth (if the need arose) and touch her granny’s back where the faded voile was clinging damp, the merest gauze between their wounds.