Chapter Sixteen

In banking they’ve got a term I never knew much about, but I saw what it meant that spring. Rady was over-extended. He owed for timber he’d made contracts for, and he owed for stock he’d bought. And he had to count on the stock paying for both. He might have made it, and I don’t say he wouldn’t, if a thing hadn’t happened and turned the wheel in the wrong direction, and it came from a quarter he least suspected of ever giving him a minute’s trouble.

Miz Rowe was getting on towards six months, going around in kind of a glow, not knowing or caring that Rady was up to his ears in worries. Being kind of little and scant-weighted most times, she showed a heap, like Junie’s orange in the middle of a stocking. And it was getting harder for her to do up her work. She hadn’t been none too stout all along, the doctor warning her to keep her from having bad luck. Junie said she never had seen a woman have the morning sickness so bad. And when that was past there was something else made her ankles and legs swell sometimes. But she’d taken care all along, and she was still taking care.

She spoke to Junie one day about getting somebody to come in and help. Junie would of gone and glad to, could she have spared the time. But she always had her hands full. “Whyn’t you git Flary?” she said, trying to think of somebody close. “Looks like they could spare her fer a couple or three months.”

Miz Rowe knew, of course, that Flary was at home, and knew she was making a hand along with the old man and the boys. She’d seen her a time or two the first year she was home, but not of late. “Why, I hadn’t thought of her,” she said. “Can she do housework?”

“Well, she was hired out to some woman over in town. I reckon she kin make out, though I wouldn’t say how good she’d be. Leastways, she could do the heavy work fer you.”

“I’ll go over there right now and talk to her,” Miz Rowe said.

“You better see what Rady says first, hadn’t you?” Junie said. “See if he kin spare her.”

“It doesn’t matter whether he can spare her or not,” Miz Rowe said, kind of sniffing. “He can get somebody else for the field. Help’s too scarce for me to pass up somebody right at my door!” And she lit out to have a talk with Flary.

Had Junie known what I knew she would of died before she breathed Flary’s name. But she never, and Miz Rowe ran right smack into it.

She went over to the Pringles and made her way through the litter in the front yard. The old woman came to the door. “Is Flary home?” Miz Rowe asked her.

In a way it was like the old woman was glad to see her. She grinned. “She shore is,” she said. “Come in. She’s on the bed. She ain’t been feelin’ so good lately.”

And Miz Rowe went in. Flary got up off the bed. I don’t reckon anything could of hit more sudden and unexpected. Flary’s dress was hiking up in front just as much as Miz Rowe’s, if not a little more. She stood there and looked at Miz Rowe. And Miz Rowe stood and looked at her. Both bulged and out of shape, and both got that way by the same man. Miz Rowe just stood and looked and never said a word. Then she commenced laughing and she turned around and walked out of the house, never once looking back nor even faltering. Just walked off, turning her back on Rady’s bastard big in Flary, and carrying her own bigness awkwardly with her. She knew. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind.

When she got home she went straight to the barn and saddled her horse, and ungainly as she was, she got on him and headed like the wind for the road. She’d not been riding since she’d known about the baby. She’d been taking good care. But it was like she wanted a purpose now to ride the devil away, or to rid herself of something unclean and unwanted. It was like she went a little crazy, and wanted, maybe, to join Annie and her young’un over in the graveyard. Like they’d had the best of it, after all. Leastways that’s what I always made of it.

And she came close to it. Junie saw her pounding down the road and she came tearing over the mill to get me. “Miz Rowe’s gone plumb out of her head,” she said. “She’s on that horse agin, an’ she went past our place goin’ like the wind. She’ll lose that young’un, shore!”

I lit out down the road, Junie keeping up behind as best she could. But it was more than a couple of miles before we came up to her. The horse was cropping grass by the side of the road and Miz Rowe was setting in the saddle, her face white, her hands gripping the pommel and all bent over. It was easy to tell the jolting and pounding had started things.

“Have you done an’ lost yer mind?” Junie scolded when we came up. “Haven’t you got a grain of sense left in yer head!”

She looked at Junie and her eyes had a kind of dull look. “I don’t care,” she says, and then she kind of moaned and hung onto the pommel of the saddle again. “I don’t care! I don’t want it! I hate it! I hate it! Let it die. It ought to die! Let him have Flary’s!” And she shuddered. “Maybe we’ll both die.”

“She’s out of her head,” Junie said, but I knew about what had happened. I told Junie. And she looked at me with her eyes as big as wheels. “My God,” she said, “hit was me sent her over there!”

We got her down off the horse and Junie made her lie down on the grass and then she sent me for Rady. He’d bought a car the year before and could get there quick. He came as fast as he could, scared to death and as white as a sheet himself. I told him, best I could, what had happened. I wouldn’t of wanted to be in his shoes. I don’t know as I could of faced it. But he did. But like many another man before him, he took out his feelings by being short with her. “What in hell’s the matter with you?” he said, gruff and mad. “Ain’t you got no sense?”

She never said a word to him. Hardly looked at him, and when he touched her to lift her in the car, she pulled away from him, like his hands were dirty and filthy.

She lost the baby. And it was a little girl. But she never acted like she cared one way or the other. She never asked about it, or seemed to grieve. She just laid there sick and white, not talking to anybody. The only time she ever showed any life was when Rady would try to come in the room. She made them keep him out. She could storm and scream at him hard enough, and she wouldn’t have him anywheres close. “Keep him out of here,” she’d yell, and if he’d come in anyhow, she’d throw anything she could lay her hands on at him, cursing him and squalling and screaming. He didn’t try but once or twice to see her. After that he went his way and left her to herself.

She was a time getting over it. A month or two, as I remember. She was up and around sooner, but not stout by any means. Junie went when she could and helped, but things got in a right smart mess, and it was mostly Rady had to redd up himself. Miz Rowe never cared. Just walked through the clutter and around it like it wasn’t there. And I misdoubt she said a dozen words to Rady all that time. It was like he wasn’t there, either.

Then she seemed to make up her mind of a sudden about things. He came home one evening and she was packing her clothes. “What you doin’?” he asked her.

“I’m leavin’,” she said.

“Leavin’?”

She had her bags laid out on the bed and was folding things neat like her old way of doing. But she turned around to look at him. “I’m leaving the whole goddamned mess. You and the ridge and Flary Pringle and everything else I’m leaving it! All of it!”

It took the wind out of Rady and he set down all at once. “Fer good?” he says.

“God, yes, for good! Forever and ever good!”

“You aimin’ on gittin’ a divorce?”

“Just as soon as I can!”

A hundred things must of run through his head, quick and flashing. The place was hers. She’d heired it from Mister Rowe, and she’d never had a joint deed made. It was hers, out and out. Rady’d never thought about trouble with her, and he’d never worried about the deed. What a woman owned, her man owned with her. But here it was. And Rady had to have the place if he was going to get out of the jam he’d got himself in. He’d be ruined if he lost it. And if she got a divorce … well, he figured he’d lost it.

He pulled himself up out of the chair and went over to her. He tried to put his arms around her. “Cordy …” he said, trying to hold onto her and turn her so’s he could talk to her. “Cordy …”

But if he meant to say he was sorry, if he meant to try to hold her with what had once held her, it was too late. It was too much water over the dam, and it was all gone. With all the strength she had she twisted loose from him and slapped him across the face so hard he rocked back on his heels. “So help me, I’ll kill you if you try to touch me again,” she hissed at him.

Looking at her he had the notion she looked a heap like she did the first time he ever saw her, her face carved and white and still and her eyes full of hate and fury, the pupils widening with her hate. Even her hair hung like it did then, black and soft like a little girl’s, around her face. There was no misdoubting her. She was through and Rady knew it. So he turned around and walked out of the room and out of the house and off the place. He never saw her again.