Tammy out of Time Page 28
Tammy sat up, rubbing her forehead, all in a daze.
“It must be in this bottom drawer,” Miss Renie said. She dropped down on her knees by the bureau, jerked the drawer open and began pawing through it. Then she pulled the drawer out and dumped everything on the floor. “I know I’ve got it somewhere.” She went on looking, paying Tammy no mind. “There, thank heaven.” She started to get up, but said, “No, I’d better put this stuff back. Ena’s mad enough without finding all this on the floor.”
“Mrs. Brent...is mad?”
“Cried her eyes out all night and now she’s got a fearful headache. All she can say is Oh, Peter, Peter, I can’t bear it!’”
“Pete? She is mad with Pete?”
“Yes, yes,” Miss Renie said with impatience, stowing things away with both hands. “Ridiculous, of course. Pete never had a notion of working for that damyankee. Too much sense for that.”
“He’s not going to...to take the job?”
“Of course not. He’s going to the Ag college and study cattle raising and come back and raise beef cattle and make cowhide bottom chairs on the side, as Mr. Fernan says.”
“Goshamighty!” Tammy breathed. “And...Barbara?”
“Oh, she’s not interested—if he asked her to be, which I doubt. Now where’s that dye? Oh, I’m sitting on it.” She slammed the drawer shut and stood. “The moon has to be orange. I’ve got the yellow meadow grass waxed in and the streak in the sky and now I’ve got to do the moon and the little flowers....” She went out talking to herself.
Tammy sat bolt upright, staring before her. “I give up too soon,” she whispered. Then she dropped back on the bed, buried her face in the pillow and wept.
The room was dark when she heard steps and Professor Brent’s voice saying, “I’ll get you a glass of cool water, and call Tammy as I go by.”
Tammy sat up in bed and pushed her tousled hair back from her face.
There came a light rap on the door, “Tammy, your Grandpa’s here.”
“Th-thank you,” Tammy said. “I’m acoming.” She got up and washed her face. Pete had likely sent word for him to come and get her. Well, he could take her right back to the Ellen B. Now. She choked down a sob as she brushed her hair. Then she packed all her things in the sack she had brought them in.
Walking slowly down the hall with the bag slung over her shoulder, she heard voices on the front gallery. She stopped and leaned against the wall by the parlor door, listening. They were all out there, Miss Renie’s rocker creaking as usual. She could hear Grandpa talking away, like always.
“Well, yes, Professor Brent,” he was saying, “I’ve got St. Peter and his record book figgered out, too. Radio give me the idea. Every word spoken on the air could be picked up and recorded, so a human’s whole life would be right there, when the time come to judge the quick and the dead.”
“That’s rather ingenious,” Pete said.
Tammy caught her breath. Pete was there, too. She waited, gathering courage to face him and all the rest.
Mrs. Brent was talking along, to Miss Renie, or maybe just to herself, her voice weak and thin. “Well, I just can’t ever plan anything any more. Two bombshells in twenty-four hours—it’s too much.”
“I’m glad Pete is showing some sense at last. That Bissle!” Miss Renie snorted.
“Really a very ordinary person,” Mrs. Brent admitted, “but he does have money.” She sighed heavily and went on: “And as for Tammy, well, all my friends said how charming, how unusual! She is unusual. I just hope it’s for the best.”
Tammy leaning against the wall, blinked her eyes and puzzled her head but she couldn’t figure out what Mrs. Brent was talking about.
Grandpa said, “Yes, Mrs. Brent, the Lord moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.”
“Yes, yes,” Mrs. Brent said. “I’ve just been trying to think of someone I know near the Agricultural school. The housing shortage——”
“Mother,” Pete broke in, “aren’t you being a bit premature? After all I haven’t had a chance, and I wouldn’t blame her if——”
“But you know what the housing problem is, Peter.”
Grandpa said, “There’s the Ellen B., and the college is alongside the river.”
Tammy drew a long breath. She didn’t know what they were talking about. But the Ellen B.—that was where she wanted to go. Right now. She slid her sack to the floor and walked slowly out to the gallery by the big front door. Grandpa came straightway and took her in his arms, and she had to swallow back the lump in her throat. “I want to...to go to the Ellen B., Grandpa. I——”
“Of course, honey.”
Tammy straightened her shoulders and gathered her strength. “But there’s something I got to say to Mrs. Brent because I promised her I would.”
“Yes, Tammy?” Mrs. Brent said.
Tammy’s eyes sought her in the shadows beyond the square of light from the front hall. “You know I promised you I’d tell you...if I ever...got into bed with a man and——”
“Oh, Tammy, I never...I mean...” Her voice sharpened. “What on earth are you trying to say? What——”
“Well,” Tammy broke in on her, “I done it.” She heard the gasp that seemed to come from all over the porch. Grandpa, who was just sitting down again, said, “Hell’s bells, what’s all this?” But she went right on just the same. “The car stopped in the flood in the middle of the night coming from Jackson. Ernie was full of corn liquor. I got him out and up to a little farmhouse and onto the top of the bed. I sat in a chair—it wasn’t even a rocking chair—for a long time. Then...it didn’t seem sensible, so I opened up the other side of the bed and crawled in with him and went to sleep. Now I told you and I reckon I better be going because I know what you all think.”
Professor Brent said, “I’m sure you handled an awkward situation in an admirable manner, my dear Tammy.”
Miss Renie said, “For heaven’s sake, if I’d stayed out with a man all night in my day and time, my name would have been mud the rest of my life, even if he’d married me at dawn at the point of a shotgun. But nowadays you just can’t shock anybody and there’s no use trying.”
Mrs. Brent said, “Why, Tammy, I hadn’t even noticed you were not at home last night, I was so upset. And as for this—well, you are a most unusual girl, I must say. But if Pete’s made up his mind to it, I’ll not say a word, because I’m so thankful he’s like himself once more. Only I do think we ought to try to correct your grammar before you marry him.”
“Hell’s bells,” Tammy cried, “I ain’t going to...to...marry Pete!”
Mrs. Brent bristled. “And why not, I’d like to know?”
“For one thing, he’s mad at me. And for the other——”
“And what’s that, pray?”
“He ain’t ever asked me.”
Pete had crossed the porch as she spoke, coming to where she stood in the light from the hall. He caught her hands in his. “I’m asking you now, Tammy.” The chairs all creaked as their occupants leaned forward to listen.
“B-but I thought you...thought...”
“I was a fool, Tammy. I just went out of my head when I saw you lying there.”
“And you ain’t mad at me any more?”
“I love you, Tammy.”
“Goshamighty! Right out here in front of everybody?”
“In front of the whole world,” Pete said, and his lips came down to hers.
Mrs. Brent said with a catch in her voice, “What on earth are you crying about, Aunt Renie?”
“B-because I’m just an old fool and it’s the nearest I ever came to a proposal!”
Grandpa said with a contentment in his tone, “Well, looks like the Lord’s arranged everything right satisfactory, and I reckon Pete better be finding him a regular preacher so’s they can get hitched proper. That is, if Tammy’s a mind to.”
Pete lifted his head at last, and Tammy looked around through the stars that spun before her eyes and shot sparks through
all her innards. “I’ve a mind to, Grandpa,” she said.
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