“Because I want to send them, that’s why,” his grandmother said. “I always did want to give him flowers.”
She began crying into her handkerchief, and the other girls moved over so that Joanne could sit beside her and hug her. “I know, I know,” she said soothingly. “Now, I tell you what do, Gram. You just buy some flowers and give them to someone you like. Prettiest flowers you can find. And then you tell yourself you wouldn’t have done it if Jamie Dower hadn’t died. That way you solve the whole thing, right?”
“Well, maybe,” Gram said.
The doorbell rang. Joanne gave Gram a brisk pat on the shoulder and stood up. “Don’t bother,” she told Ben Joe. “I’ll get it. It’s my date.”
“What?”
But she didn’t answer; she was already out of the room. Gram refolded the handkerchief to a dry place and then suddenly, in the middle of the process, stopped and looked up at Ben Joe. “What’d she say?” she asked.
“She said it was her date.”
“Did she mean her appointment? Or did she mean her date?”
“Her date, is what she said.”
All of them fell silent, listening. A young man laughed in the front hallway. Ben Joe could read in Gram’s face the slow transition from grief to indignation.
“Why, she can’t do that!” she said. “Joanne?”
The two voices ran on, ignoring her.
“Joanne!” Gram said.
Joanne reappeared, still carrying her coat over her arm.
“Who’s that you got with you?” Gram asked.
“John Horner, Gram. Come on in, John.”
John Horner appeared next to her, soundlessly. He still had his broad, open smile and he didn’t seem to think it strange to be greeted by a whole silent, staring family grouped around a weeping old woman. He nodded to all of them in general and lifted a hand toward Ben Joe, whom he recognized.
“This is my grandmother,” said Joanne. “And Ben Joe, and Susannah, and Jane, Lisa, Jenny, and Tessie. This is John Horner.”
“How do you do?” John Horner said. He was addressing mainly Gram, as the oldest member of the family, but Gram just sat up straighter and stared narrowly at him.
“I wish I’d of married Jamie Dower,” she said.
“Ma’am?”
“Gram has just heard that a friend passed away,” Joanne began. Her voice was the old high-school Joanne’s, soft and bubbling. She stood very close to John Horner while she talked to him. Under cover of Joanne’s voice Gram went on muttering to the others.
“If I’d of married Jamie,” she said, “I would of had a different family. On account of different genes mingling. They wouldn’t all have gone and done queer things, or acted so—”
“Hush, Gram,” Susannah said.
“Ben Joe?” Joanne called.
“What.”
“John was asking you something.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was just asking,” said John, “aren’t you the one that’s at Columbia?”
“That’s right.”
“I was there for a while. Took a business course. Mrs. Hawkes, ma’am, I’m sorry to hear about your friend’s passing.”
Gram frowned. “Well,” she said ungraciously. She thought a minute and then added, “Troubles always descend lots at a time, seems like.”
“They do,” said John. He came further into the room to sit on the arm of the rocker, and Joanne moved over to stand beside him. “My old man had a saying. My old man used to say, ‘It never rains but it—’ ”
“Who is your daddy?” Gram asked suddenly.
“Jacob Hart Horner, ma’am.”
“Jacob Hart Horner. That so.”
“Yes’m.”
“Oh. I know him.”
“Do you really?” He smiled politely.
“Yes, I know him.”
“Ah.”
Gram nodded a while, considering.
“What you think he’d say if he saw you here?” she asked.
The silence before her question had been long enough so that John was just beginning to consider the conversation over. He froze now, in the act of turning toward Joanne, and looked back at Gram blankly.
“Ma’am?” he said. “What’s that?”
“If he saw you here. If Jacob Hart Horner saw you here. What you think he’d say?”
“If he saw me here?”
“Yes, here.”
“I don’t—”
“Saw you taking Joanne out. Joanne Hawkes Bentley out. What you think he’d say?”
“Well, nothing, I don’t guess.”
“Nothing.” She nodded again, with her eyes fixed veiled and thoughtful upon the floor. “No, I don’t guess he would,” she said finally. “I remember Jacob Hart Horner. Remember him well. Came here in his teens, he did, and took up with my boy Phillip. He was supposed to be working, but he didn’t do much of that. Lived off little Sylvester Grant and my boy Phillip. I never will forget, one time he called his folks long distance from this very house and me sitting in the same room listening to him. I reckon they wanted to know had he got a steady job and he said yes, he was working in the chicken cannery. There was a chicken cannery then, down by the river near the blue-denim factory, but I never saw him near it. And I reckon they wanted to know what he did there, because he started talking about carrying grain — said that was his job. Now, I don’t know what his folks were like and I don’t want to know, but let me just ask you this: what kind of intelligence do you suppose they had, to believe a body could get a job carrying grain in a factory that deals with dead chickens?”
“Well, now, I don’t know,” John Horner said. He was laughing, and didn’t seem to be insulted.
“There’s bad blood there,” Gram said. She looked at him a while, at the friendly face with the dark eyes made slits by laughter, and then she blew her nose and looked down into her lap. “I am getting old,” she said.
The room grew silent. John looked over at Joanne soberly, and she clutched her coat more tightly to her and started toward the door.
“Gram,” she said, “I hope you feel better.”
“Well. New things come up. A minute ago Jamie Dower slipped from my mind altogether for a second.”
“Sure. It’s always that way. You’ll—”
“What I was meaning to bring up a minute ago,” Gram began, “what I wanted to say …”
She stopped and looked over at Ben Joe.
“Um,” he said. He took his hands out of his pockets and walked over to where John was standing beside Joanne.
“What’s the matter?” Joanne asked.
“Well, I was just wondering.” He looked at her face, with its blank brown eyes, and then changed his mind and directed the question toward John. “What I think Gram was trying to say,” he said, “… well, hell with it, what I’m trying to say is, it doesn’t look to me like a good idea for you to be going out, Joanne.” But he was still facing John; it was to John’s more open eyes that he said it.
“Why not,” John said, turning it into a challenge instead of a question.
“Well, it’s a small town. That’s one reason.”
“Small town, what’s that got to do with it? Listen, boy, you and your family got to stop hanging on to your sister this way. Got to start—”
“But she’s still married, damn it!”
His mother, coming in on the tail end of the sentence, stopped in the doorway and looked at Ben Joe.
“What?” she said.
Ben Joe turned to her. “Mom, I’m asking you, now. Do you think Joanne ought to go out on a date?”