Part 9 (1/2)

'Unca Biff! Watch me do the split.'

Gently he set Baby on her feet again. She curved both arms above her head and her feet slid slowly in opposite directions on the yellow waxed floor. In a moment she was seated with one leg stretched straight in front of her and one behind. She posed with her arms held at a fancy angle, looking sideways at the wall with a sad expression.

She scrambled up again. 'Watch me do a handspring. Watch me do a--'

'Honey, be a little quieter,' Lucile said. She sat down beside Biff on the plush sofa. 'Don't she remind you a little of him--something about her eyes and face?'

'h.e.l.l, no. I can't see the slightest resemblance between Baby and Leroy Wilson.'

Lucile looked too thin and worn out for her age. Maybe it was the black dress and because she had been crying. 'After all, we got to admit he's Baby's father,' she said.

'Can't you ever forget about that man?'

'I don't know. I guess I always been a fool about two things. And that's Leroy and Baby.'

Bill's new growth of beard was blue against the pale skin of his face and his voice sounded tired. 'Don't you ever just think a thing through and find out what's happened and what ought to come from that? Don't you ever use logic--if these are the given facts this ought to be the result?'

'Not about him, I guess.'

Biff spoke in a weary manner and his eyes were almost closed.

'You married this certain party when you were seventeen, and afterward there was just one racket between you after another.

You divorced him. Then two years later you married him a second time. And now he's gone off again and you don't know where he is. It seems like those facts would show you one thing--you two are not suited to each other. And that's aside from the more personal side--the sort of man this certain party happens to be anyway.'

'G.o.d knows I been realizing all along he's a heel. I just hope he won't ever knock on that door again.'

'Look, Baby,' Biff said quickly. He laced his fingers and held up his hands. 'This is the church and this is the steeple. Open the door and here are G.o.d's people.'

Lucile shook her head. 'You don't have to bother about Baby. I tell her everything. She knows about the whole mess from A to Z.'

'Then if he comes back you'll let him stay here and sponge on you just as long as he pleases--like it was before?'

'Yeah. I guess I would. Every time the doorbell or the phone rings, every time anybody steps up on the porch, something in the back of my mind thinks about that man.' Biff spread out the palms of his hands. 'There you are.' The clock struck two.

The room was very close and hot. Baby turned another handspring and made a split again on the waxed floor. Then Biff took her up into his lap. Her little legs dangled against his s.h.i.+n. She unb.u.t.toned his vest and burrowed her face into him.

'Listen,' Lucile said. 'If I ask you a question will you promise to answer me the truth?'

'Sure.'

'No matter what it is?'

Biff touched Baby's soft gold hair and laid his hand gently on the side of her little head. 'Of course.'

'It was about seven years ago. Soon after we was married the first time. And he came in one night from your place with big knots all over his head and told me you caught him by the neck and banged his head against the side of the wall. He made up some tale about why you did it, but I want to know the real reason.'

Biff turned the wedding ring on his finger. I just never did like Leroy, and we had a fight In those days I was different from now.'

'No. There was some definite thing you did that for. We been knowing each other a pretty long time, and I understand by now that you got a real reason for every single thing you ever do. Your mind runs by reasons instead of just wants. Now, you promised you'd tell me what it was, and I want to know.'

'It wouldn't mean anything now.'

'I tell you I got to know.'

'All right,' Biff said. 'He came in that night and started drinking, and when he was drunk he shot off his mouth about you. He said he would come home about once a month and beat h.e.l.l out of you and you would take it. But then afterward you would step outside in the hall and laugh aloud a few times so that the neighbors in the other rooms would think you both had just been playing around and it had all been a joke. That's what happened, so just forget about it' Lucile sat up straight and there was a red spot on each of her cheeks. 'You see, Bartholomew, that's why I got to be like I have blinders on all the time so as not to think backward or sideways. All I can let my mind stay on is going to work every day and fixing three meals here at home and Baby's career.'

'Yes.'

'I hope you'll do that too, and not start thinking backward.'

Biff leaned his head down on his chest and closed his eyes.

During the whole long day he had not been able to think of Alice. When he tried to remember her face there was a queer blankness in him. The only thing about her that was clear in his mind was her feet--stumpy, very soft and white with puffy toes. The bottoms were pink and near the left heel there was a tiny brown mole. The night they were married he had taken off her shoes and stockings and kissed her feet. And, come to think of it, that was worth considerable, because the j.a.panese believe that the choicest part of a woman--Biff stirred and glanced at his watch. In a little while they would leave for the church where the funeral would be held.

In his mind he went through the motions of the ceremony. The church-riding, dirge-paced behind the hea.r.s.e with Lucile and Baby--the group of people standing with bowed heads in the September suns.h.i.+ne. Sun on the white tombstones, on the fading flowers and the can--was tent covering the newly dug grave. Then home again ' --and what? 'No matter how much you quarrel there's something about your own blood sister,' Lucile said.

Biff raised his head. 'Why don't you marry again? Some nice young man who's never had a wife before, who would take care of you and Baby? If you'd just forget about Leroy you would make a good man a fine wife.'

Lucile was slow to answer. Then finally she said: 'You know how we always been--we nearly all the time understand each other pretty well without any kind of throbs either way. Well, that's the closest I ever want to be to any man again.'

'I feel the same way,' Biff said.

Half an hour later there was a knock on the door. The car for the funeral was parked before the house. Biff and Lucile got up slowly. The three of them, with Baby in her white silk dress a little ahead, walked in solemn quietness outside.

Biff kept the restaurant closed during the next day. Then in the early evening he removed the faded wreath of lilies from the front door and opened the place for business again. Old customers came in with sad faces and talked with him a few minutes by the cash register before giving their orders. The usual crowd was present--Singer, Blount, various men who worked in stores along the block and in the mills down on the river. After supper Mick Kelly showed up with her little brother and put a nickel into the slot machine. When she lost the first coin she banged on the machine with her fists and kept opening the receiver to be sure that nothing had come down. Then she put in another nickel and almost won the jackpot. Coins came clattering out and rolled along the floor.

The kid and her little brother both kept looking around pretty sharp as they picked them up, so that no customer would put his foot on one before they could get to it The mute was at the table in the middle of the room with his dinner before him.

Across from him Jake Blount sat drinking beer, dressed in his Sunday clothes, and talking. Everything was the same as it had always been before. After a while the air became gray with cigarette smoke and the noise increased. Biff was alert, and no sound or movement escaped him.

'I go around,' Blount said. He leaned earnestly across the table and kept his eyes on the mute's face. 'I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can't make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can't seem to make them see, the truth.'

Singer nodded and wiped his mouth with his napkin. His dinner had got cold because he couldn't look down to eat, but he was so polite that he let Blount go on talking. The words of the two children at the slot machine were high and clear against the coa.r.s.er voices of the men. Mick was putting her nickels back into the slot. Often she looked around at the middle table, but the mute had his back turned to her and did not see.

'Mister Singer's got fried chicken for his supper and he hasn't eaten one piece yet,' the little boy said.

Mick pulled down the lever of the machine very slowly. 'Mind your own business.'

'You're always going up to his room or some place where you know he'll be.'

'I told you to hush, Bubber Kelly.'

'You do.'

Mick shook him until his teeth rattled and turned him around toward the door. 'You go on home to bed. I already told you I get a bellyful of you and Ralph in the daytime, and I don't want you hanging around me at night when I'm supposed to be free.'