“Val!”
“Well, he did.”
“It’s not a nice thing to say!”
She was sharp, but he kind of grinned about it, and as to who Wilkes Booth might be, or when he knocked on my door, I had no idea at that time. But later, when I’d gone to bed, prayed up my thanks to God and even I think slept, I sat up in bed quite suddenly. Outside was the sound of a bell, the tiny bell people use to put on a cat. It came to me that while most of the plumbing here drained into the septic tank, the shower water ran out in an open gutter that led to a little ravine, so maybe, if drops of blood were still there, an animal could smell it. But even that didn’t seem to account for a feeling of evil out there.
I suddenly knew who Booth was.
It came to me, I’d prayed up plenty of thanks, for being out from the bars, but hadn’t asked forgiveness for what I’d done to put me behind them in the first place. I worked on that for a while, then felt better, heard nothing more, and fell asleep.
Chapter IV
So for a while Val laid off of me, at least off my misspent life, and for a couple of months I was happy, with my freedom, my work, and her, though busier than that paperhanger, with mosquitoes as well as hives. I snatched the trees out quick, now that I knew how to do it, and was done with them later that week. Then I raced the calendar, to get stuff in the ground so it would start to grow. First I had to lime, or double-lime actually, as the land was fairly poor, and turn it in with a plow. Then I double-fertilized, and cut that in with a disk. Then I seeded, for lettuce, spinach, broccoli, corn, and all kinds of stuff. I did that all with the tractor, sometimes needing help, like someone to ride the planter putting tomato seedlings in, and was given a boy named Homer. He was a colored fellow who parked cars at the Ladyship, and came out every day in the truck to pick up stuff to take in, green stuff, that is, as soon as it was ready and I could cut it and pack it in crates.
On top of all that were the hams, a big source of profit, now the Ladyship was open and made a sales outlet. Getting them ready in town, it seemed, was much too complicated, as they had to be smoked out here, and besides, it was a different kind of routine from what restaurant chefs are used to. From the carcasses he bought, he had them cut every day, and brought them out at night, usually four, two picnics and two big ones, but sometimes eight. She did the curing and cooking, squirting formula into a vein with a little pump she had, then later steaming them under pressure, baking them, and doing them up in plastic, with “MR. VAL’S FINE HAMS” printed on. Once a month, when enough had been formulated up and hung in the cold room, I did the smoking. I rolled the racks to the smokehouse, dumped sawdust out on the floor, tossed a lighted newspaper in, closed up, and watched the dampers. At the end of forty-eight hours, out they came, brown as hickory nuts. The racks, it turned out, were called “trees.” Until then I had thought the Ham Tree some kind of a comedian’s gag, like the Rock Candy Mountain. It turned out, though, to be real.
The formula, she told me, was secret, but one day I called it skookum, and that started her laughing. Then we both laughed so hard we cried. Then she got ashamed, and said stop talking like that. So I did. So she did. So I didn’t. So she didn’t. So after that it was skookum, our own little private joke.
The hams we always did early, as soon as he shoved off for town, but I’d see her again for lunch, and, for her, generally dressed up. Or at least I put on a coat, a new one I bought. It turned out, once I’d made restitution, I was on a salary, one hundred dollars a month and my keep, and the coat was my first outlay. But every little thing brought us closer, like the color the coat should be. I got brown, but she said it ought to be blue, to go with my hair, which is yellow, like molasses taffy, and my eyes, which she said are blue, though until then I hadn’t much noticed. I said brown was quiet, and then we’d argue it out, but it seemed sweet that anyone cared what I wore. In between we’d talk of the fat, but kind of around the edges, generally working in toward the good that needs to be done. She spoke of the church they went to, off Branch Avenue in the city, but more often of another one, in St. Mary’s, that she’d gone to when she was little.
In between everything she’d eat and eat and eat, great big ham sandwiches, with pie, often a whole one, ice cream, pastry, and yogurt. Then at night she had her “one real meal of the day,” as she called it, and he did. We lived on beef, pork, ham, veal, and lamb, with occasional poultry; on potatoes, another vegetable, and gravy; on pie, ice cream, pastry, and pudding, but never fresh fruit or green salad. It was the best food for taste I ever ate in my life, and the worst for health I could even dream of. I couldn’t, of course, say such a thing to him, but to her I thought I should, just as a favor, since I was somewhat an expert on it, from my days in the training camps. I got the surprise of my life. We’d been talking along quite friendly, and I sort of hinted, when she cut herself more pie, that it might not be the best thing for a person of her peculiarity.
For the first time she was disagreeable to me. She said: “Duke, I made it plain, I thought, the first day you were here, that the one thing I ask, on this painful subject, is for people to mind their own business. I want to be left alone. I know, don’t worry, what it means to be like this. I know where I’m headed. It’s to the little graveyard, by my little church, down in St. Mary’s City. But it would seem to me, in view of all that, a friend wouldn’t bring this up.”
“A real friend, he would.”
“Not if he wants a friend.”
“From now on I’ll remember.”
“I do my best, Duke, my remaining time on earth, and if I do, it would certainly seem the little I ask could be given me.”
“All a friend asks is to help.”
“Duke! I’ll go insane!”
For the first time, as she started her singsong chant about the good she did on earth, I heard something phony in it. But the scream she gave wasn’t phony, and neither was the look in her eye, as she got up, left the nook, tramped through the living-room, and from there to the main dining-room, and stood staring at his office on that side of the house, which was in front of the dining-room and looked out at the drive. From that time on, I couldn’t shake off a hunch that she lived in fear, not of me, not of the St. Mary’s City graveyard, but of Val Valenty, her husband.
Came the night, in June, when he broke the news of the party. We’d had saddle of lamb, done on the electric grill, and as usual she was still at it, munching along with her eyes shut, when he and I were done. He was talking for the hundredth time about what he had done for Woman, when all of a sudden, with one of those shifts of his, he said: “However — let’s on to the shindy.”
She said: “...Shindy?”
“Oh, we’ll have to have one.”
“Some particular reason?”
“Housewarming! We certainly ought to do something after the trouble we had, getting the place finished and all.”
He slapped his leg, laughed, and told about some of the trouble, but she didn’t see any joke.
Pretty soon she asked: “When is the party to be?”
“Fourth of July, I thought.”
“Isn’t that pretty soon?”
“Three weeks is time enough.” He thought a minute, then admitted: “Well, that is short notice, but Congress had forced my hand.”
“Is Congress coming?”
“Good Lord, no, not all of them. But some of them would think it strange if I left them out. And with this recess they’ll be taking, the Fourth is my only choice.”