“Lyman’s all right,” my dad said. “He needs to get out more. Needs a girl himself to go riding with. Even if she has to eat as much ice cream as you do. Chocolate and nuts all over it, like she wasn’t never going to have another chance at it. Just howdy, mister, and forget the napkins; I ain’t got time to be fancy.”
“Oh, be quiet, you,” Edith said. “I only had one dish of it.”
“Yeah, just a little old triple decker.”
“But I like ice cream. And it was strawberries, not nuts.”
“Good. I’ll have Lexton bring you a gallon of both next time. Make him stack them on top his head like a trained monkey. He’s got that nice flat bald spot, just right for juggling things on it.”
“He doesn’t either. And it’s not flat like you say it is— it’s ridged.”
“Why, it is too. Flat as a pancake. It’s where his ma hit him with the shovel.”
“She didn’t do any such thing.”
“Well, she did. Banged on the head with a shovel. ‘Now behave yourself,’ she said, ‘and quit picking them britches, or I’ll bang you again.’”
“I’ll bang you on the head with a shovel,” Edith said, “if you don’t be quiet. Now hush, and see if you can keep this car out of the ditch.”
“I’m just trying to get you some ice cream, Edith. I don’t want you to go home hungry.”
“I’m sick of ice cream. And I don’t want to go home yet.”
“Good,” my dad said. “I don’t either.”
“But I can’t imagine any of this for him,” Edith said. “Can you?”
“Who? Bernie Lexton?”
“No. Lyman. I think I’m the only woman he’s ever talked to. Besides mother, I mean.”
“Poor bugger.”
“Yes. And not the way you mean it, either.”
So they were alone now. It was one of the few times, and the car was stopped on the country road. On both sides of them, since it was a piece of sandhill country and too steep for plows, they had all those sunflowers and all that sage and soapweed and blue grama grass, and I don’t know whether or not they had the moon. But I hope they did, a full moon, because Edith Goodnough deserved to be seen in that pale blue light at least once in her life, and anyway I know they had the high stars snapping clean for them, and all that country was quiet too. So my dad must have held her then, and kissed her — and not one of those first nose-positioning, chin-bumping kisses, but where you’ve gone past that part already and you’ve learned to make a good mixture of your mouth with hers, and it tastes good and you both want more, and then you have more. So he must have kissed her, and been kissed in return, and I’m going to hope they got out of the car then. I’m going to believe they did that, believe they stood out into that pale blue quiet and then together walked away from the car, up the hillside, until they found a hollow in the grass and lay down on his coat and talked quietly, almost in a whisper, though there was no need for whispering, while he unbuttoned her soft blouse and she watched his eyes, and his eyes showed that he knew he was being given a gift, and the only thing he was afraid of was that his hard work-calloused hands might somehow harm such smooth blue whiteness, and all the time on her part she wasn’t afraid of anything, but was just waiting and watching him still, his dark eyes, and then she had one hand warm on his neck and the other alive in his black hair. And I’m going to believe that it was as beautiful as sometimes it can be, when you’re right with one another, when together it’s good for you both, because Edith deserved that too.
AFTERWARDS they must have talked a little, still quietly, in a sad whisper now. Edith must have said, “What’s going to happen to us, John? What am I going to do now?”
“Why, we’re going to get married.”
“But I don’t know that.”
“We’re going to get married. We’ll have a fine time.”
“I don’t know that at all.”
“I’m asking you, though. Right now. Is that what you’re waiting for? I’m too comfortable and easy to get up on my knees, but you know I want us to be married.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean how can I?”
“Why hell, girl, you just say yes now, and a little later you say ‘I do.’ What else is there?”
Edith must have sat up then, moving up off his arm where she had been lying while he made circles in her brown hair with his fingers. She must have begun to put her blouse and skirt on again.
“I mean,” she said, “there’s Lyman.”
“Well, damn Lyman,” my dad said. “He’s old enough. What is he — twenty-four, twenty-five? He’s old enough to manage by hisself, ain’t he?”
“Lyman was twenty-three,” Edith said, “June sixth. But it’s not a matter of age, you know it isn’t. It’s him, it’s the way he is, and it’s me too. I’ve always had to be there for him — against Daddy.”
“All right, yes, I know that. I’ve seen it all often enough. But Jesus, Edith, you’d only be a half mile apart even so.”
“It’s not a matter of miles either.”
“Well, what then? Hell.”
“It’s Daddy too. Don’t you see that? Think about him, the way he is. His hands.”
“I don’t want to think about him. He’s a dried up son of a bitch. Even before his hands, he was.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s a fact, Edith. He’s no good to anybody, let alone to hisself.”
“But that doesn’t seem to matter,” she said. “Does it? I can’t help that. All I can help is. . I can help about mother.”
“But for godsake, Edith. Your mother is dead.”
“I know that. That’s what I mean. When mother died I had to take things up into my own hands. And you know it doesn’t matter if I wanted to or not: sometimes now I don’t even know what it was I might have wanted once. I can’t recall. It’s been too long; it will be eight years in August since mother died. But anyway, these things and these people here are mine now. I’ve taken them up. That’s all there is. And besides, what would Lyman do?”
So what was my dad going to say to any of that? He was lying there in sandhill grass, watching her while she talked and while the light shone pale on her fine face, and I suppose he must have known that he couldn’t win any fight against the memory of any frail little woman, even if that woman was just skinny and tiny and homesick and even if she had been dead for close to eight years. But perhaps he still had reason to hope — I suppose he did— so perhaps he changed targets and aimed instead at Edith’s obligation to Lyman, because maybe he still thought he could at least win a fight against a twenty-three-year-old shuffling, shambling brother. With humor then my dad must have said something like:
“All right, hell then. If he has to, Lyman can come live with us. I’ll cut him another hole in the outhouse.”
“What? Don’t be silly.”
“He can have his own Sears, Roebuck catalog too. We won’t bother it none. We won’t even notice if he uses all the pages except the ones with corsets and women’s socks on them. He can spend all the time he wants to out there— we won’t care.”
“You are good for me,” Edith said.
“Why sure. Old Lyman will be as happy as a dead sow in clover.”
Edith felt about in her hair to see if she had all of the grass combed out. “Give me another kiss,” she said. “And stop all this talking about outhouses and dead sows.”
THEY WENT HOME THEN, out of the sandhills where, for a while, they had been alone in the sage and the blue light, then north on the highway to the corner and east almost a mile, before they got to the Goodnoughs’, to find Lyman. They didn’t find him, though, not right away. They had to stop the car and look for him along the roadside in the tall grass, and they didn’t find him until they turned the headlights of the car on again. Even then they didn’t find him immediately. He was lying on his side, rolled into himself like a kid, asleep with spit dribbled onto his chin. He was a good fifteen feet off the road. Edith brushed him off.