Deliver Us from Evie Page 5

  “Take Pete and Gracie with you,” said Dad, so I whistled for the dogs to follow me.

  14

  “IS THAT PATSY?” MOM said when I got inside. “She got over here real fast. I just hung up from talking to her.”

  “It’s him, not Patsy.”

  Mom went to the window. “Mr. Duff? I saw the car coming down the road. I wondered how she could have gotten here when I just put the phone down.”

  “What’d she call about?”

  “She wanted to talk to Evie.”

  “Maybe she wanted to warn her. He doesn’t look like he’s in a very good mood. Says he’s got to get something off his chest.”

  “I was afraid of something like this,” Mom said.

  She’d been working in her office.

  Dad always said she was the brains and he was the brawn.

  Whenever we got the morning hog prices, she’d call around and see what all the locals were offering, see who could outbid who, start angling for the buyer who’d get our load.

  Christmas wasn’t an ideal time to sell hogs. Prices went down because folks favored poultry at holidays, but Dad wanted to pay some on the Atlee debt before the first of the year.

  “What exactly were you afraid of, Mom?” I followed her into the kitchen.

  She began pouring herself a cup of coffee. “Evie,” she said. “Mr. Duff’s on her case. You know that, Parr.”

  “I don’t know what’s going on, though. I thought I did at one time, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “What’d you think at one time?”

  We sat down at the kitchen table.

  I said, “I figured Evie and Patsy had this crush on each other.”

  “What made you come to that conclusion?”

  “Evie never had girls for friends, not even when she went to County High. She was always a loner.” I wasn’t going to tell on Evie: mention the postcard or “Asian Journey.” I wanted to see what Mom came up with.

  “Evie never had a knack for making friends, of any kind.”

  “Then Patsy Duff comes along and …” I shrugged and didn’t finish my sentence.

  “It’s not Evie’s fault,” said my mother. “It’s Patsy Duff who started this thing.”

  “What kind of thing is it anyway?” I asked.

  My mother let out this long sigh and shook her head. “You called it right, I think…. I just hope you did, hope there’s nothing really going on, for Evie’s sake.”

  “Does Mr. Duff think Evie’s a dyke?”

  “I hate that word, Parr…. Someone like Evie gets the blame when there’s any suspicion of such a thing.”

  “Do you think she’s one?”

  “That’s crossed my mind, Parr. You’ve heard me nagging at her about trying to be more of a lady. Of course it’s crossed my mind.”

  “What if she is one?”

  “It’s going to be very hard for her if she is.”

  “It’ll be hard for both of them, won’t it?”

  “It’ll be harder for Evie. Evie can’t pass herself off as something else. It isn’t in her nature.”

  “No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

  I don’t know why I felt relieved to have it spoken, but I did. It was always there, but it was always put another way, as though all Evie needed was to dress up a little more, stop smoking no hands, take smaller steps, get her hair styled—then she’d be no different from anyone else.

  It was a relief to tell the truth: to admit that my sister’s way wasn’t going to be fixed by a turtleneck sweater or a skirt. She was deep-down different.

  “If Evie is a lesbian,” my mother said, and my stomach did a flip at the harsh sound of that word, “she’s got a bigger problem than some other girl would have who isn’t so stereotypical.”

  “Like Patsy Duff. She doesn’t seem the type.”

  “Exactly.” Mom sipped her coffee for a moment and then she said, “Parr, don’t tell your father about this conversation. Douglas is not a sophisticated man. He won’t understand this, if this is what it might be.” Then she glanced up at me. “Do you understand it?”

  “I understand what a homosexual is because of all the AIDS stuff. But they never talk about females.”

  “It’s not different. It’s loving the same sex. Your father’s always thought it was a big joke. You know how he makes fun of Cousin Joe.”

  “I thought they were funny, too.”

  “I know, Parr.” Mom got up and rinsed out her coffee cup. She said, “I just hope Evie has the name without the game. It’s bad enough to look that way, but it’s awful to look it and actually be it…. Then you’re a stereotype. You’re what everybody’s always thought one of those women was like.”

  “I’m what everybody thinks a farm boy’s like. I’m driving around on tractors, going to 4-H, planting in the spring, harvesting in the fall—what’s the difference?”

  “The difference is you’re not against the law, Parr. And the church doesn’t call you a sinner.”

  “Maybe something’s wrong with the law.”

  “It’s just not a wholesome thing to be.”

  “You mean if you look it.”

  “It’s better not to, yes,” said Mom emphatically.

  We heard the Porsche leave a moment before we saw Dad and Evie come through the door.

  Evie went upstairs without a word.

  Dad stood there taking off his gloves and his cap.

  “I’d punch him out if we didn’t need that bank loan,” he said. “You know what he told Evie?” He threw his cap and gloves on the table. “He said she was to stay away from his daughter! He said she was never to write her or try to see her, and get this: He said she was never to come anywhere near Duffarm!”

  My mother was putting her coffee mug inside the dishwater.

  “Did you hear me, Cynnie?”

  “What did Evie say?” My mother’s back was still toward us.

  “Evie just took it on the chin! What could she say? Evie knows we’re working on that loan!”

  I said, “I better go out and test the prod. It might need batteries.”

  If Dad heard me, it didn’t register. Nothing registered but what had just happened between Evie and him and Mr. Duff.

  I started toward the door.

  Mom said, “Have some coffee, Douglas.”

  “I hate decaf! You get some real coffee for this house by dinnertime or I’ll eat down to The Paradise!”

  “Why don’t you do that?” Mom told him in her quiet voice that meant she was boiling mad too. “Take in a movie while you’re at it, Douglas. We won’t wait up.”

  I closed the door behind me.

  15

  I CALLED ANGEL TWICE that afternoon, and that night Angel’s mother phoned Mom and asked her if I could go there to Sunday dinner. They’d drive me over after church and Mrs. Kidder would drop me off later that afternoon.

  “It pays to advertise,” my dad said.

  “What does that mean?” Mom asked him.

  “That’s what Parr’s been doing. Advertising himself on the telephone. Right, Parr?”

  “I didn’t know you’d called her up, Parr.”

  “Because he was using the barn phone,” Dad said. “I knew he wasn’t calling here. He was dragging the line all the way down to the cows so I wouldn’t hear him.”

  “And they were mooing,” I laughed. “And Angel was saying, ‘Where are you, Parr? Out in the pasture?’”

  I provided a little badly needed comic relief.

  No one was saying anything about Mr. Duff’s visit. No one was saying anything much at all, unless they were saying it out of my earshot.

  Evie stuck to business, complained that we got taken by the hog buyer, bitched because it’d been her turn to hose out the back of the truck, and allowed as how she’d rather get out of the hog business altogether.

  “And live on what?” Dad snorted. “They’re our gold.”

  You’d almost think none of it had happened, except for the red cashmere
scarf Evie’d brought back with her from St. Louis. I saw it looped around her bedpost when she wasn’t wearing it, which she was, most of the time, except when we did the dirty work of getting the hogs to market.

  Sunday morning she wore it to church.

  Mom got the bright idea to ask Cord for Sunday dinner, and then, trying to act like it was an afterthought, she’d told him, “Why not join us for the service at St. Luke’s beforehand?”

  I think she wanted the Duffs to see him with us, with Evie, because she pushed him into our pew next to my sister.

  The only trouble was the Duffs weren’t at church.

  Mom kept looking across at their pew, which stayed empty. I couldn’t remember a Sunday without one of them being there.

  I kept watching Angel, and she glanced back at me a few times, too.

  I could hear her voice, high and sweet through all the hymns, and Dad nudged me once and said, “That gal can sing!”

  Bud Kidder, Angel’s brother, was there, too. He looked like Abraham Lincoln Jr., with thick black-framed eyeglasses, and he almost drowned Angel out with this big baritone voice.

  The Kidders waited to introduce themselves to my folks after the service. Then the five of us squeezed into their little Ford and headed off to Floodtown.

  After Mr. Kidder said grace, we ate chicken and dumplings on a table that pulled down out of the wall like a Murphy bed. Bud and Mr. Kidder had a long conversation about the book Bud had got him for Christmas, The Foremost Mobile Home Fix-It Guide, until Angel said that I probably didn’t want to hear anything about venting roofs or the installation of a tie-down and anchoring system.

  “I don’t care,” I said. “We do a lot of fixing up over at our place, too.”

  “I know your brother,” Bud said. “He’s not in my dorm, but I remember him from when we were naming girls we’d like to see be Ag Queen…. He wanted some sorority girl for queen, not even from Missouri, much less a farm girl.”

  “Bella Hanna,” I said.

  “We kept telling him we didn’t want anyone from Sorority Row. No one did.”

  “You can’t tell Doug anything,” I said. “He went home with her for Christmas.”

  “That must have broke your mother’s heart,” said Mrs. Kidder. “I hope you never do that to us, Bud.”

  “It wouldn’t be for some sorority girl if I did,” he said.

  “They couldn’t all be bad,” said Mr. Kidder.

  “They’re not bad, Daddy,” Bud said, “they’re just snobs. The only time they want to date an ag student is when we have the Harvest Ball and crown the queen. They all want invitations to that. Then they drop us like hot potatoes.”

  “Are you going to the university when you finish at County?” Mrs. Kidder asked me.

  “I plan to.”

  “He’s not going to be a farmer, though,” Angel said.

  “I wished I’d never been one,” said Mr. Kidder.

  “You love farming,” Bud said. “It was where we farmed, not that we farmed, broke your heart.”

  “We didn’t have a choice,” Mr. Kidder said: “That was our land.”

  Mrs. Kidder said, “What are you going to do if you don’t farm, Parr?”

  “I haven’t decided yet, ma’am.”

  “Just don’t be a banker,” Mr. Kidder said.

  “I never would be,” I told him. “I wouldn’t be good at finances.”

  “You have to be good at finances and you have to be good at telling people who need something you got it, but they can’t get it.”

  “Like Fat Cat Duff,” said Bud.

  “No name-calling, Bud,” said Mr. Kidder. “Parr here might be a friend of Mr. Duff’s.”

  “Not me,” I said.

  “I’ll tell you something funny about that daughter of his,” said Mrs. Kidder. “She come into the store and rented herself a P.O. box in the name of Jane Doe. I thought that was funny. Like John Doe? She paid up for six months, too.”

  “Where’s this?” I asked.

  “Mother works over at Barker’s General Store in King’s Corners,” said Mr. Kidder, who called his wife “Mother” just as she called him “Father.”

  “They have a post office in there,” said Mrs. Kidder.

  “And the best pies anywhere because Mother bakes them.”

  “Patsy Duff rented a box there?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I’d heard right.

  Mrs. Kidder was nodding, but before she could speak, Mr. Kidder said, “Mother, I don’t think it’s supposed to be public information who rents those boxes.”

  “Doesn’t she go off somewhere to private school?” said Bud. “Over near Jeff City?”

  “Father’s right,” Mrs. Kidder said. “It’s none of our business. Forget I said anything about it.”

  “We’re having apple pie for dessert,” said Angel. “And I made the crust. It’s made of graham crackers.” Finally, Angel and I got off alone together. We took a long walk around Sunflower Park.

  “How come I got invited today?” I asked her.

  “Daddy wanted to meet this person ringing me up so much.”

  “I couldn’t help it.”

  “I know. I was glad.”

  “Why is that?”

  “If you tell me why you couldn’t help it, I’ll tell you why I was glad.”

  “Because you’re like some new color I’ve never seen,” I said. It was a direct quote from an Evie Burrman “statement.” Sometimes she’d leave her notebook somewhere downstairs. I’d sneak fast looks. I almost thought she left it there wanting us to see it. It must have been hard for Evie to try and keep it all inside. I couldn’t have.

  Angel drew in her breath and shook her head, and let her breath out again. I could see it wisping ahead of us in the cold air. “I’m not that good at putting things,” she said.

  “I’m not either, Angel. I don’t know where that came from.”

  “From the heart,” she almost whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said softly.

  It was nice.

  It wasn’t like any other moment. We both knew something had happened to us because of each other.

  I didn’t even care that that was all there was to it.

  More was coming, and I knew it.

  16

  AND HERE’S SOME STRANGE news, Doug wrote, that I forgot to mention when we talked at New Year’s. Bella has become a vegetarian. She and some other Tri Delts made up their minds never again to eat anything that had a face. They have their own table in the sorority house, and they call themselves The Vicious Veggies—vicious because they’re vegetarians with a vengeance. They won’t date anyone who eats meat, fowl, or fish! So guess what yours truly has to live on? Pasta, mostly. I’ve got pasta coming out of my ears!

  Dad and Evie and I were riding back from a used-farm-equipment sale where we’d gotten a rotary mower we’d been looking for.

  It was a dirty thing the farmer hadn’t bothered to clean properly. Its big blades were crusted with dried grass and mud, but it would mow the big pastures over at Atlees’ just fine once it was oiled and waxed and put in the shed until spring.

  We kept everything at our place shipshape. Dad was best at appearance upkeep, and I helped him, but it was Evie who tackled anything mechanical. She was good at any kind of repair.

  Evie always drove us anywhere we were going.

  She was loosening the red scarf around her neck and laughing at Doug’s letter, which Mom had told me to take with me and read to them.

  “The way Doug loves red meat? This will test him!” she said.

  “That girl’s making mincemeat out of him,” said Dad.

  “Not mincemeat,” I said. “She’s turning him into a vegetable.”

  “What’s got into Doug?” Dad said. “Hell, in high school he’d love ’em and leave ’em. He never got led around by the nose by any gal.”

  “He’s a goner, I guess,” I said.

  “If Angel told you tomorrow you couldn’t eat anything with a face, would you listen?�
��

  “She wouldn’t tell me that.”

  “But what if?” he persisted.

  “It depends. If it was for health reasons I might. You gave up real coffee for Mom.”

  “That’s right!” Evie said. “And she doesn’t have to know you take a thermos into The Paradise and fill it up coupla times a week.”

  “Coffee’s different,” said Dad. “Your mother’s the only person thinks coffee’s a killer.”

  “But the point is,” I said, “you gave it up for her, same as Doug gave up fish and fowl and meat!”

  “Your mother is my wife. I been married to her all these years. I wouldn’t have made such a promise when we were just dating.”

  “Parr’s got you.” Evie laughed.

  “What about you, Evie?” I asked.

  “I already gave something up, but nobody’s noticed.”

  “What’d you give up?”

  “You tell me,” said Evie. “I gave something up just yesterday.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “What’d you give up, Evie?” Dad said.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You been with me all day, and you still don’t know?”

  I thought about it for a second and then I hit my forehead with my palm. “Cigarettes!” I said. “You haven’t had a cigarette all day!”

  Evie laughed.

  “She’s got one behind her ear,” said Dad.

  “That’s where it’ll stay, too,” said Evie.

  “You haven’t been smoking!” said Dad. “I’ll be darned!”

  “I gave it up at midnight last night.”

  “How come?” I said.

  “I just did.”

  “Yeah, but on your own steam,” Dad said.

  Evie didn’t say anything.

  “That’s different,” Dad said.

  I was thinking: Patsy Duff must have been back at private school about two weeks now.

  “Nobody could get you to give up anything,” Dad said.

  “Don’t be too sure,” Evie said.

  I jumped in with “Congratulations, Evie.”

  “Thanks, Parr.”

  Dad didn’t let go of it. I think it was sheer stupidity that made him pursue it, just dumb stubbornness.