Even with Mister JayMac absent, the dining room was louder than a party suite in the Tower of Babel. Pork chops, chicken, country-fried steak. A dozen different vegetables. Four kinds of pies. Given the direction of the wind-south-by-southeast-every person in town must’ve had a saliva buildup.
Suddenly Phoebe burst through the swinging door from the kitchen. I hadn’t seen her for nearly two weeks, and some of the words she’d spoken then still chimed like breaking soda bottles in my memory: “I hope I never see you-or another slimy willie-long as I live!” (Just for instance.)
My appetite died. My inner organs blended themselves into an ebony glop like that trapped in the storm celler’s canning jars. Phoebe probably hadn’t come to testify to my tenderness as a lover. I didn’t know why she’d come, but her presence-to one side of Muscles’s head-of-the-table spot-put everybody, me especially, on notice our meal would cause bigger problems than gas and oversnug belts. She let Muscles finish saying grace, bless her, and Muscles offered her his chair.
“No thank you. I’ve done et. Go on, Muscles, sit back down, okay?” She waited, arms behind her back, until Muscles obeyed her. Dishes began to pass, serving spoons to unload, silverware to glitter. Phoebe wouldn’t meet my eye, or I wouldn’t meet hers, each of us glancing away whenever the other made a feint at contact.
“Well, Missy, what can we do for you?” Muscles said.
“Stay away from my mama. Let her be the decent person she was till Daddy went overseas.”
That riveted everybody’s attention. Silverware stopped clinking, and the radio in the parlor-tuned to a soap opera-sounded a couple of knob twists louder than it had a second ago. Embarrassment settled like a clammy rubber sheet.
“War’s a horrible thing,” Muscles said-consolingly, I guess.
“Men are horrible things,” Phoebe said.
“Careful, mouthy girl,” Evans said. “What’s a titwren of a piece like you know about men anyways?”
“Moren you’d ever figger, Mr Evans.”
Oh God, I thought, she’s come over here to tell everybody about our Saturday-morning folly. She wants Mister JayMac to drop me in creosote, roll me in feathers, and send me back to Oklahoma hanging upside-down from a cane pole.
“Like mother like daughter.” Evans lipped an ugly sneer.
Reese Curriden cracked Evans in the mouth with his elbow. Then he took Evans backwards to the floor, choking him, his thumbs like screw-bolts under Evans’s jaw. Five or six guys stood up, but Henry and I stayed seated, benumbed or maybe just too confused to act. Evans, flat on his back in the toppled chair, waved his hands at his shoulders to show he gave up. Curridan let go just as Muscles was about to drag him off.
“I say, ‘Men’re horrible things,’ and yall jump like red-neck crackers to prove it,” Phoebe said.
Evans stayed mute this time. So did everybody else, and Phoebe walked from Muscles at the table’s head to Henry at its foot, without seeming to care she’d interrupted an important pregame energy-stoker. Some of our fellas-Bebout, Fadeaway, Sosebee-dug in and ate, but most of us waited for a payoff, a backfire loud enough to call Mister JayMac. Phoebe’s eyebrows sparkled with sweat. Her skin shone like a swimmer’s.
“How many of yall’ve cuckolded my daddy?” she said.
Fadeaway lifted his head. “Cold-cocked your daddy?”
“Cuckolded,” Dunnagin told him.
“S what I said, cold-cocked.” Fadeaway spoke around a mouthful of greens. “How many of us’ve knocked her daddy’s lights out? Her question don’t make sense.”
“How many of yall’ve slept with my mama. You Waycross boys got cow flops for brains, Mr Ankers?”
Fadeaway started to rise, but Curriden rose with him, and Fadeaway dropped back into his chair again.
“Gimme a show of hands,” Phoebe said. “All yall who’re guilty as scarlet sin, raise em high.”
“Phoebe,” Muscles said, “this is a bad idea, child. I’ve had some damned bad uns myself, and I know.”
Phoebe jumped all over Muscles. “You could start everbody off, Mr Musselwhite. Whynt you lift yore own hand first? A team capn should set a zample.”
“Phoebe, I-”
“Put your damned ol hand up, Lon K. Musselwhite! You think I want this to take thole rotten weekend?”
Muscles raised his hand. He didn’t do it halfway either. He stuck his arm straight up, a macelike fist bristling at the end. He kept a grum face too. When nobody else at table did anything, Phoebe turned to Reese Curriden.
“You too. You don’t think everbody down at Hellbender Pond on the Fourth figgered you and Mr Musselwhite was tusseling over spare ribs, do you? Git yore hand up.
“Phoebe, a hand in the air here’s sort of like crowing in the rooster room,” Curriden said.
“Yo’re proud of screwing my mama? Of doing dirt to a sojer overseas?”
“Well, Phoebe, some of us’re just called to a different set of arms.”
Evans guffawed. A few other he-manly Hellbenders-Fanning, Parris, Mariani, Fadeaway-giggled like Camp Fire girls walking by a cherub statue. My queasmess took on a lumpy sharpness, like ice cubes shifting in a plastic bag.
“If you aint ashamed, raise yore disgusting hand!” Phoebe stabbed a potato with a serving fork and held it over her head, meaning, Git em up, git em up.
Slowly, Curriden raised his hand. Now he and Muscles made a leery pair, the only two players ready-sort of-to admit they’d abetted Miss LaRaina in her infidelities.
“Who else?” Phoebe said. “Phoebe sees all, Phoebe knows all. Fess up while it’ll still git you right with God n me.” No one joined the hands-up club.
“All right, Mr Musselwhite. All right, Mr Curriden. I forgive yall, you sneaky sonsabitches.”
Forgiveness did it. Suddenly, Dunnagin, Sosebee, and Parris raised their hands, Parris several beats slower than the other two. Five out of fifteen men, a third of the Hellbenders in McKissic House.
“Swell,” Phoebe said. “Any more?”
“Miss LaRaina put the mash on me last season,” Sosebee said. “Before yore daddy’d even got his tail out of town.”
“For God’s sake, Jerry Wayne, shut up,” Dunnagin said.
But Phoebe’d already walked around Henry and laid a hand on his shoulder. Her hand looked like a doily draped over the crown of an armoire. When Muscles disgustedly lowered his arm, so did the other four men. Phoebe didn’t care.
“Hey, Mr Clerval, didn’t Mama vamp you into her bed too? Men’s big as you jes seem to pull her, automatic-like.”