“And you won’t go back.”
“I’m going to bed.”
And I did. But I didn’t sleep. I lay there pondering over the things that Pembrook had told me, trying to find the right and the wrong of it. Our mother was maybe wrong for pleasuring herself with Mr.
Carpenter, but if she hadn’t I wouldn’t be here. Pop was wrong for taking life away from our mother, but she gave him cause in his eyes. Mr. Carpenter was wrong for shooting Pop, but the Taggert blood was up and Pop probably attacked him first. Hardest of all to think about was me being Mr. Carpenter’s daughter. If it was true and he knew it, how could he have let me live all these hard years as Sweet Baby Jenny Taggert while that other girl, that Claudia, had everything her heart desired and then some?
Just before dawn I decided what to do. The boys, even Pembrook, were all sound asleep. I got up quiet as a mouse and dressed in our mother’s green-and-white polkadot dress and my high-top sneakers and snuck out to the barn. The barn used to be a busy place, but it was still and empty that morning. No more cows to bellow for me to come and milk them, no horses to gaze sad-eyed after an apple or a carrot. Way in the back, behind the piles of rotten harness, in a dark corner draped over with cobwebs, I found what I was looking for.
It was a can of stuff that Pop used to put down to kill the rats that infested the barn and ate their way through the winter fodder. There wasn’t much left in the can, and what there was looked dry and caked. Maybe it was so old it wouldn’t even work any more. But I scooped some out with a teaspoon and put it into one of Deucy’s Bull Durham pouches and set off down the road.
I kept up a good pace because I wanted to get there before Mr.
Carpenter went off to the bank, and before the boys woke up and came after me in Pembrook’s car. The morning was fresh and cool, and I didn’t sweat one bit.
When I got to the Carpenter house, the milkman was just driving away. I went around to the back, picked up the two quarts of milk, and knocked at the back door. Mrs. Carpenter opened up. She looked sleepy-eyed but pleased to see me.
“Why, Jenny,” she said, “you’re here bright and early. Come in.
Come in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I came to make breakfast.”
“Well, that’s wonderful. Mr. Carpenter is shaving. He’ll be down in a few minutes. He likes two four-minute eggs, I never can get them right, two slices of toast, and lots of strong black coffee. And now that you’re here, I think I’ll go back to bed and get a little more beauty sleep.” She giggled like a silly girl, waved at me, and pranced out.
I put the milk away and started in making the coffee. There was an electric coffee pot, but my coffee is good because I make it the old-fashioned way. I boiled up some water and when it was bubbling away, I threw in the ground coffee, lots of it, to make it nice and strong. Then I turned the fire down to keep it hot while it brewed, and I cracked an egg so I could have an eggshell to throw in to make it clear. And I emptied out the stuff that was in the tobacco pouch right into the pot.
When I heard his footsteps on the stairs I put on another pot to boil up water for his eggs. He came into the kitchen smiling and smelling sweet.
“Well, Jenny,” he said. “You came back. I’m glad, because you and I are going to get along just fine. You’ll be happy here. I’ll see to that.”
I got out a cup and saucer.
“I been hearing things, Mr. Carpenter,” I said. “Things I never dreamed of.”
He frowned. “What things have you been hearing, Jenny?”
I poured coffee into the cup.
“I hear that you’re my daddy.”
He sank down into a kitchen chair. “Yes,” he said, “that’s true enough.”
I put the cup and saucer on the counter to let it cool off a bit so it wouldn’t be too hot for him to take a nice big swallow.
“I hear that you shot our Pop and buried him in your rose garden.
They’re mighty pretty roses you got out there.”
He held his head in his two hands. “They swore never to tell you.
Those boys swore.”
“Pembrook told me because he’s afraid I’ll come to some harm in your house.” I set the cup and saucer on the table in front of him.
“Oh, Jenny, sweet baby Jenny, I would never harm you. If anything, I’d like to make up for all those years I tried to put you out of my mind. I’d like you to come and live here and be my daughter and let me give you all the things you should have had.”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not a baby any more.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a fine lovely woman, just like your mother was. God, how I loved that woman! She was the only wonderful thing that ever happened in my whole life. I wanted to take her away with me. We were all set to go. We could have gone to some other town or to a big city where no one knew us. We’d have taken you along. And we’d have been happy. Instead, she died.”
“Pop killed her. Because of you.”
“You know that, too.” He sighed. “Yes. He killed her and I killed him, and I’ve been living out my days in an agony of remorse.
There’s no one I can talk to. Clemmie doesn’t know any of this.
Sometimes I wish I were dead.”
“Drink your coffee.”
The water for his eggs was boiling. Gently I rolled the two eggs into the pot and stuck two slices of bread into the toaster. He left the table and came to where I was working.
“Jenny.” He put his hands on my shoulders and turned me around to face him. “What can I do to make it up to you? I’ll do anything in my power, and believe me that’s a lot. You name it. It’s yours.”
I thought a minute. Would it be right or wrong to take from this man? I was having my usual trouble figuring out the difference between the two. Would it be right or wrong to let him drink the coffee?
Then I said, “Could you put Pembrook through law school?”
“Consider it done.”
“And Earl and Wesley, can you find jobs for them? They’re good workers, only down on their luck.”
“Tell them to come to the bank.”
“And what about Deucy? Would you get him a new guitar and a ticket to Nashville? He sings real fine.”
“Not only that. I know Johnny Cash personally. We’ll work something out.”
“Now this one’s hard. Can you get Ace out of jail and set him on a straight path?”
“The warden is Clemmie’s cousin. And I own a ranch in Wyoming. He can go there and work off his wildness. But what about you, Jenny. What can I do for you?”
I shrugged. “Oh, I guess I’ll just live here for a while. I can help Mrs. Carpenter and sort of keep an eye on things.”
He hugged me and planted a big kiss on my cheek. “That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say. You’ll never regret it. Mmm, that coffee smells good.”
He was heading back to the table and his coffee cup. But I got there first and swiped it out from under his nose.
“That’s coffee’s cold,” I said. “Come to think of it, the whole batch is bitter. I tasted it before you came down. I’ll make some fresh.”
I poured all the coffee down the drain and dished him up his eggs and toast. We drank the fresh coffee together, and he went off to his bank.
And that’s the way it is now. Pembrook’s way is better, and he’s studying real hard. He’ll graduate sooner now that he doesn’t have to work his way through. Earl and Wesley really like being bank tellers, and Deucy has his leopardskin Cadillac and all the girls he can handle, although he says he misses the porch swing. Ace sent a photograph of himself on a horse wearing a big old cowboy hat. He looks funny but he says he’s doing fine.
And me? Every day while the roses are blooming I cut some and put them in the house. Mrs. Carpenter just loves them. I’m waiting.