35
AT THE END OF MAY, ARVIN GRADUATED from Coal Creek High School, along with nine other seniors. The following Monday, he went to work for a construction crew that was putting a new coat of blacktop on the Greenbrier County stretch of Route 60. A neighbor across the knob named Clifford Baker had gotten him on. He and Arvin’s father used to raise hell together before the war, and Baker figured the boy deserved a break as much as anyone. It was a good-paying job, nearly union wages, and though he was designated a laborer, supposedly the worst job on the crew, Earskell had worked Arvin harder in the garden patch behind the house. The day he got his first check, he picked up two fifths of good whiskey from Slot Machine for the old man, ordered Emma a ringer washer from the Sears catalog, and bought Lenora a new dress for church at Mayfair’s, the priciest store in three counties.
While the girl was trying to find something that fit, Emma said, “My Lord, I hadn’t noticed before, but you sure are starting to fill out.” Lenora turned back to the mirror and smiled. She had always been straight up and down, no hips, no chest. Last winter, someone had taped a picture from Life magazine of a heap of concentration camp victims to her locker, wrote in ink, “Lenora Laferty,” with an arrow pointing to the third corpse from the left. If it hadn’t been for Arvin, she wouldn’t have even bothered to take the picture down. But she was finally starting to look like a woman, just like Preacher Teagardin had promised. She was meeting him three, four, sometimes five afternoons a week now. She felt bad every time they did it, but she couldn’t tell him no. It was the first time she had ever realized just how powerful sin could be. No wonder it was so hard for people to get into heaven. Each time they met, Preston had something new he wanted to try. Yesterday, he’d brought a tube of his wife’s lipstick. “I know it sounds silly, with what we been doing,” she said timidly, “but I don’t think a woman should paint her face. You ain’t mad, are you?”
“Well, heck no, darling, that’s all right,” he told her. “Shoot, I admire your beliefs. I wish that wife of mine loved Jesus like you do.” Then he grinned and pushed her dress up, hooked his thumb over the top of her panties and pulled them down. “Besides, I was thinking about painting something else anyway.”
ONE EVENING, AS SHE WASHED THE SUPPER DISHES, Emma looked out the window and saw Lenora coming out of the woods across the road from the house. They had waited on her a few minutes, then went ahead and ate. “That girl sure is spending a lot of time in them woods lately,” the old woman said. Arvin was leaned back in his chair drinking the last of the coffee and watching Earskell try to roll a smoke. The old man was bent over the table, a look of intense concentration on his lined face. Arvin watched his fingers tremble, wondered if his great-uncle was beginning to slip a little.
“Knowing her,” Arvin said, “she’s probably out talkin’ to butterflies.”
Emma watched the girl scramble up the bank toward the porch. She looked like she had been running, the way her face was flushed. The old woman had noticed a big change in the girl the last few weeks. One day she was happy, the next day filled with despair. A lot of girls went a little crazy for a while when the blood started flowing, Emma reasoned, but Lenora had gone through all that two years ago. She still saw her studying her Bible, though; and she seemed to love going to church more than she ever did, even though Preacher Teagardin couldn’t hold a candle to Albert Sykes when it came to giving a good sermon. At times, Emma wondered if the man really cared at all about preaching the Gospel, the way he kept losing his train of thought, like he had other things on his mind. There she was, she realized, getting all stirred up about those chicken livers again. She would have to pray on it again tonight when she went to bed. She turned and looked at Arvin. “You don’t figure she might have her a beau, do you?”
“Who? Lenora?” he said, and then rolled his eyes as if it was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever heard. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, Grandma.” He glanced over and saw that Earskell had made a mess of his cigarette, was just sitting there with his mouth open, staring at the makings on the table. Reaching over for the little sack of tobacco and the papers, the boy began rolling the old man a new one.
“Looks ain’t everything,” Emma said harshly.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he sputtered, ashamed that he had joked about the girl. There were already too many people doing that. It suddenly dawned on him that he wouldn’t be at school anymore to keep them off her back. She was going to have a rough row to hoe next fall. “I just don’t think there’s any boys around here she’d be interested in, that’s all.”
The front screen door opened and closed with a squeak, and then they heard Lenora humming a song. Emma listened closely, recognized it as “Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow.” Satisfied for now, she dipped her hands in the lukewarm water, began scrubbing on a skillet. Arvin turned his attention back to the cigarette. He licked the paper and gave it another twist, then handed it to Earskell. The old man smiled and fumbled in his shirt pocket for a match. He searched a long time before he found one.
36
BY THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST, Lenora knew she was in trouble. She had missed her period twice and the dress that Arvin had bought her would hardly fit anymore. Teagardin had broken it off a couple of weeks before. He told her that he was afraid if he kept meeting her, his wife was going to find out, perhaps even the congregation. “Ain’t neither one of us wants that to happen, right?” he said. She walked by the church several days before she found him there, the door propped open and his little car sitting under the shade tree. He was sitting in the shadows near the front, his head bowed when she stepped inside, just like that day when she first came to him, three months ago, only this time he didn’t smile when he turned around and saw who it was. “You ain’t supposed to be here,” Teagardin said, though he wasn’t totally surprised. Some of them just can’t quit it all at once.
He couldn’t help but notice the way the girl’s tits pressed against the top of her dress now. He had seen it time after time, the way their young bodies filled out once they started getting it regular. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had a few extra minutes. Maybe he should give her one last good fuck, he was thinking, when Lenora blurted out, her voice cracking and hysterical, that she was carrying his baby. He jumped up with a start, then hurried to the front door and closed it. He looked down at his hands, thick but soft as a woman’s. He wondered, in the time it took him to draw a deep breath, if he could strangle her with them, but he knew damn well he didn’t have the guts for that sort of business. Besides, if he were to accidentally get caught, prison, especially some loathsome dungeon in West Virginia, would be much too harsh for a delicate person such as himself. There had to be another way. He had to think fast, though. He considered her situation, a poor orphan girl knocked up and half out of her mind with worry. All these thoughts ran through his head while he took his time locking the door. Then he walked to the front of the church where she sat on one of the benches, tears running down her quivering face. He decided to begin talking, which was what he did best. He told her that he had heard of cases like hers, where the person was so deluded and sick over something they had done, some sin they had committed that was so terrible, that they started imagining things. Why, he’d read about people, just common folks, some of them barely able to write their own name, who became convinced that they were the president or the pope or even some famous movie star. Those kinds, Teagardin warned in a sad voice, usually ended up in a nuthouse, getting raped by the orderlies and forced to eat their own waste.