Tammy out of Time Page 8

  A long time later her ears awoke, hearing voices that came from all sides, into her sleep.

  “Pete’s little goat girl, I bet you.”

  “Not such a little girl—look at that dress—my aching back!”

  “Shut up, Ernie, you’ve got an evil mind.”

  “Doesn’t look like any little innocent such as he——” The whisper died away.

  “Well, it’s a live goat anyway—I’m not stewed.”

  “Oh, gosh—Mrs. Brent’s red japonicas——”

  Tammy struggled to get her eyes open. Lights were shining down on her from the ceiling, blinding bright. The first thing she made out was Nan at the foot of the steps, a red flower in her mouth, the petals drifting downward as she munched.

  “I’ll say it’s a real goat—whew, what a smell!”

  That was Barbara, saying that. A fury came over Tammy. She sprang up, Barbara’s wicked smell offending her nose. “A clean goat doesn’t smell—” she sniffed the air—“no more than a clean human.”

  Ernie laughed. “That’s telling you, Barb, old girl.” He leaned toward her, breathing deep. “Breath of the East, out of the harem to you——”

  “Shut up, Ernie.”

  Then Tammy saw how all their eyes fastened on her like search-lights on a boat on the river, and her flash of anger dissolved under their gaze. She hoped they thought her dress was pretty, she hoped she hadn’t spoken out too free. “My little goat’s been on the road all day,” she said with humility, “and so have I.”

  Barbara said, “It’s Tammy, isn’t it,” and there was kindness in her tone. “You look all in—hey, you dopes, call Pete.”

  “Pete! Hey, Pete! Come out here,” they called and some ran in to get him.

  “I’m plumb tuckered out, for a fact,” Tammy said, feeling the strength ooze out of her knees as she spoke.

  Then Pete came through the door and crossed quickly to her with long strides. “Tammy!” He caught her by the shoulders with both his hands. “Your grandfather——”

  Tammy nodded, unable to speak for a moment. “They came and got him, Pete, and took him away. He told me...you said....”h could come....” Her legs were past supporting her any more. Pete caught her in his arms before she went down. In the dizziness that almost drowned her, she heard a confusion of voices.

  “What in the world, Peter? The child from the river?”

  “Yes, Mother, it’s Tammy. Where shall I put her?”

  “Her grandfather——”

  “Yes.”

  “Aunt Renie’s little room—that will be best.”

  “I’ll get her undressed, Mrs. Brent. I’ll help you.” That was Barbara.

  Pete was carrying her a long way. His mother kept on saying things: “I didn’t realize...why, she’s a grown girl....Oh, dear, her face...that dreadful——”

  Then the bed came up to meet her and Tammy opened her eyes on a light that hung down from the ceiling. It was blinding-bright and she had to blink and squint and close her eyes again.

  Pete said, “Why isn’t there a shade on this light?”

  “Your Aunt Renie does what she likes with this room, Peter.”

  There was a rattle of china and the sound of pouring water. Then a wet cloth went over Tammy’s face, making her gasp. Barbara was saying, “There, there, that’ll make you feel better.” Tammy tried to sit up. “I’m all right.” But the dizziness came over her again. “Nan——” She tried to say Nan must be hungry.

  Pete said, “I’ll see to Nan. You just sleep now.”

  Tammy closed her eyes. Other voices came to her. “I wonder if she has anything fit to sleep in.”

  ‘There’s her bundle.”

  “It might be infested. Oh, dear——”

  “Maybe there’s a gown of Aunt Renie’s in here—yes, this’ll do.” Then somehow sleep came over Tammy, deep and dark and soft. She let herself sink down into it gratefully, caring no more what anyone said or did.

  8.

  THE green shades stained the light and subdued it so that Tammy slept on past the next morning’s sunrise. She awoke hearing the distant cackle of hens, familiar yet strange and too far away. Where was she? Oh—at Pete’s house, in the little room, the one they called Aunt Renie’s little room. But it was larger than both rooms on the Ellen B., and the ceiling was high, dwarfing the wooden-posted bed on which she lay, making the chairs and table and bureau seem small.

  The bed quivered with her breathing and when she rose on one elbow the better to look around it bounded to her movement as an echo to a call. “The outspringingest bed I ever felt,” Tammy whispered in wonder. She felt the bleached smooth sheets with her fingers, she passed one hand over the blanket and studied the bed-spread that was thrown down over the foot of the bed. It had a design of minarets and trees of strange shapes and a Persian border new to her eyes.

  The walls of the room were plastered white and climbing up the plaster were painted morning-glories blooming, pink and blue. Small kittens played hide-and-seek among them. In every corner was painted a toadstool, oversize, that a little naked angel might perch on it, wearing a peaked hat and blowing a horn that was shaped like a morning-glory.

  Tammy’s wide eyes moved on to her own reflection in the mirror on the opposite wall. She was a tousle-haired stranger to herself in the blue nightgown they had put on her. It was sleeveless and low cut. It’d sure give Grandpa a start, if he could see her like this. She gave a deep sigh for Grandpa and hoped his aching joints were eased this morning and wished that he too might be awakening amid flowers and angels. Suddenly, words came back to her from last night when she had been too travel-weary to gather their meaning—“anything fit to sleep in...her bundle...infested——”

  Infested—it sounded like a dirty word. Pete’s mother had used it. “I got no lice in my clothes,” she said with indignation. Then, not seeing her new dress anywhere, she bounded out of bed, feeling a great concern for it. She found it at last in a heap behind her sack on the floor. “No way to treat a body’s best dress,” she said, “no way at all.” She caught it up and smoothed it as best she could and laid it with care across a chair.

  After that she tucked the tail of Miss Renie’s long nightgown under her arm and made a slow circuit of the room, feeling the smooth wood of the chairs, letting her fingers play around the fine knobs of the bureau drawers, even pulling a little on the knobs to see in what manner the bureau drawers went in and out. When she came to the table she found tubes of paint there and a palette and slender brushes standing in a can of turpentine. A half-finished painting lay face up, showing Johnny-jump-ups and white eardrops in a blue bowl with a kitten curled beside it. “Somebody’s sure plumb mad about cats,” Tammy said and went on to the window.

  She pulled aside one shade and looked out. The early sun shone slantwise between great tree trunks, setting gray moss aglow and throwing far shadows on the smooth-cut grass. Everything was trimmed and tidy beyond all believing, and all the great yard was shut in by a green hedge, squared off at the top like a wall. It was all tamed and set. How could she ever get used to it when she had the habit of the wild running river and the swamp?

  She let the shade fall back into place and the room all at once seemed dark. Last night there had been a light. She studied the bare bulb that hung from the ceiling and discovered the button that turned it on and off. No matches, no oil, no chimney to clean nor wick to trim; just a twist of the fingers was all it required. It was a miracle, like the bush that burned with fire and was not consumed.

  After a while she left off working with it and set about getting dressed. It was a bother not to be able to throw the wash water into the river and be done with it, but she supposed living on the land was bound to have some inconveniences to it. She hoped she was doing everything right—all the pieces had lovely pink roses on them and were far too fine for the lowly uses to which she must put them.

  When she had on her clean undergarments, she slipped her fresh red-and-white checkered dress ov
er her head. In this elegant room, so completely furnished, it seemed dull and faded as never before. She could see it down to the waist in the looking glass—she could see how it hung loose from her shoulders, shapeless and awkward. Maybe it was not good to see too much of one’s self, she sighed.

  But it was a wonderful looking glass. It was no hardship at all to stand before it and brush her hair a hundred strokes the way Grandma said a girl should do. She turned this way and that to see herself from every angle. Then she got out her little jar of face paint and put a round bright spot on each cheek. It gave her a gay look, though her eyes kept right on being gray and serious under their dark, straight brows. Gray was perhaps a serious color, so they could not change no matter how merry she might be. She leaned close to the mirror. “That’s me, that one in there. I’m pretty,” she whispered. Then she drew back, still looking, grown uncertain. “Maybe—I don’t know. It might be.”

  She found the hand mirror lying on the bureau and she knew there was a way to see oneself sideways. She searched the angles till she found her profile and she laughed aloud to see it. Who could have known that her nose was so straight, that her chin went out in a little point? She could look all day and still be surprised.

  At last she laid the mirror down and made up her bed, pausing to examine the headboard that was made of some dark fine wood and carved with wild roses, like the Cherokee rose. There was still no sound from the rest of the house, although the sun must be well up by now. She wanted to go and see Nan, but perhaps it would not do to go until invited. Besides, it might be that her door opened into someone else’s room and she would not like to burst in on a stranger. So she sat down in the little straight chair by the door, hands folded in her lap. She waited a long time.

  Then a step came. It paused outside the door. Someone coughed and said, “Hist!”

  Tammy jumped up. “Hist,” she said.

  The doorknob rattled. “Can I come in?”

  Tammy opened the door. It was the one they had called Ernie, a cup of steaming black coffee in his hand. He held it out to her and grinned. “To wake you up. An old Southern custom.”

  “I am awake, but I’d sure like to have it.” Ernie was about the prettiest man she had ever seen. He had a smooth-cheeked, shining look. His blue eyes were laughing and his light-brown hair was curly enough to satisfy any girl. Only right now there was a black smudge across one cheek. Tammy wondered if she ought to tell him about it.

  He was looking past her at the walls of the room. “Jeepers,” he said and came all the way in, “Miss Renie went all out on this, didn’t she?”

  “Went out?”

  “Um-m.” With his head cocked to one side and his hands in his trousers pockets, he walked around the room, studying the toad-stools, scowling at the angels. “I mean, she really went to town.”

  “Maybe so—I haven’t seen her.” Tammy sat on the edge of the bed, watching him.

  Ernie turned, blinking his eyes. “You’re cute, do you know it?” Tammy shook her head.

  Ernie laughed and waved a hand toward the walls. “What have we here? A human mind, turned wrong side out. If we only knew the meaning of it—how a psychiatrist would love it! Everything means something, something means anything, everything means anything—all that sort of thing. And lurid, I bet. A frustrated soul, maybe. Or is she just poking fun at the universe? Knowing Miss Renie, I wouldn’t put it past her—say, don’t give me that solemn, listening look. Nobody ever pays any attention to little Ernie.”

  “I will pay attention to you.”

  Ernie sat down beside her on the bed. “And I’m going to pay attention to you, little one. But def. Pete said you were rare, but I didn’t believe him.” He sang the words over like a song, “I didn’t believe him. Rare and tender and garnished with mushrooms and morning glories.” He laughed at her amazed look, and the bed bounced with his laughter.

  “I reckon this is the bouncingest bed in the world,” Tammy said. “It’s as good as a joggling board.”

  “And what’s a joggling board?”

  “I never seen one, but I’ve heard tell. It’s like a bench only it’s so long you can jounce it.”

  “What would one use it for?”

  “For courting.”

  “Not putting ideas into my head, are you, little one?”

  “No,” Tammy said. “You can use it to joggle a baby to sleep on, too.”

  “A sort of before-and-after board—say, that’s clever, do you get it?”

  “Yes.” Tammy sipped her coffee, unsmiling.

  “I’ll be darned if I know whether you do or you don’t. But any-way, you’d better drink that coffee down. It’s all you’ll get for a while. Pete made it at crack of dawn, before he went out.” He crossed the room to the looking glass.

  “Pete has gone away?” Tammy lowered her coffee cup and her heart sank too.

  “Only to the fields to plant and plow. Heaven knows why—just one of his quaint ideas about how to run a plantation.”

  “Quaint?” she puzzled. “You mean he doesn’t know how to run a plantation?”

  “Oh, he’ll make out—if he ever settles down and makes up his mind to it.”

  Tammy pondered that for a minute, sipping the rest of her coffee. “Do—do you live here?”

  “Me? Lord, no!” He leaned toward the mirror now, discovering the smudge on his cheek. “Sure messed up my face, poking up that kitchen fire.” He took a handkerchief from his pocket and scrubbed his cheek as he spoke. “No wonder my charm failed me. But thank heaven I don’t live here, honey child. You couldn’t hire me to live in such a state of rural inconvenience.” He nodded in the direction of the washstand.

  “Yes, on the river you can throw it right out. But you must have stayed all night,” she persisted, trying to get it straight.

  “Got to arguing with Pete and by the time we were through, it was late—or I was too soused—to drive back to town. Should have known better. Can’t argue with a man who sees both sides of a question. Regular Hamlet, he is. Thinks too much. All clean now?” He turned for inspection.

  “Yes. Only it was Cassius who thought too much.”

  “Holy smoke—Pete didn’t say—I mean, he didn’t mention your being personally acquainted with W. Shakespeare.”

  “But I’m not. How could I be? It says in the front of the book that he died in 1616.”

  Ernie thrust his hands in his pants pockets and just looked at her for a while. “All this, and the literal mind! Imagine having the courage to look on life bare, with no veil of foolery between. Tell me, how-come you know your Shakespeare so?”

  “A boy that went to school—long time ago when we were tied up alongside folks—he got mad and threw it at me. Then Pete saw it and he...he seemed to think a lot of it. So after he left I tried to figger it out.”

  Ernie grinned. “I see. Pete. So that’s how it is. You’d even read Shakespeare for him. That tall, dark and handsome guy is always getting my gals away from me.” He turned back to the mirror and straightened his tie. “You’re cute as a mule, do you know it?”

  He sure liked to look at himself, Tammy thought, and said, “A mule? There’s nothing cute about a mule.”

  “Just a manner of speaking, my love. Means I like you. And speaking of mules, I’m hungry enough to eat one. That Osia!”

  “Who is Osia?”

  “Miss Renie’s cook—when so inclined.”

  “You mean there’s a cook that comes and cooks?”

  “Yep. Why not?” He turned and looked at her.

  “But isn’t Pete’s mother here? And Miss Renie?”

  “Sure, but——Oh, I get you. Why have a cook, with two able-bodied women in the house? You’ve got something there. But Mrs. B. has a headache this morning and Miss Renie never gets out of bed till she smells something cooking on the stove. I just made the rounds with coffee to cheer them in their long wait—Ernie, mother’s little helper, that’s me.”

  “It was kind of you.” Tammy finished her c
offee.

  “Say—” he whirled on her so quickly she nearly dropped the cup—“you don’t happen to be personally acquainted with a wood stove, do you?”

  Tammy had to laugh. “You talk the roundaboutest talk! But I can cook on a wood stove, if that’s what you mean.”

  Ernie caught her by the wrist. “Come with me, baby, and I’ll lead you to it.”

  He took her quickly through a little cross passage to a long ell gallery, giving her no time to look around as she would have liked. She only saw the porch was long and pillared and railed with lacy iron-work, with a table and chairs against the rail. She had a glimpse of an open wooden stairway that went up to more rooms on the floor above, and of iron steps going down to a brick-walked garden. “Biggest house that ever I’ve seen,” she said, skipping to keep up with him.

  “Clear out the junk, put in four or five bathrooms, a furnace, a modern kitchen, and it might be liveable. Ten thousand would make a start on it. Come on, you can look when I’m not starving.” He hustled her through the last door at the end of the porch. “There’s a good fire going, thanks to little Ernie. Now do your stuff. Fried for me, sunny side up.”

  Tammy stood in the middle of the kitchen, lost in admiration. “It’s sunny side every side with the sun coming in those two big windows.” She drew a long breath. “Hell’s bells, it wouldn’t cramp you to cook for a regiment in a room like this!” There was a long pine table. There were several chairs, one of them with a seat that seemed to think it was a bed. It had springs in it, too. She could see them hanging down underneath.

  “One of Miss Renie’s little inspirations—to keep the cook contented when the cash to pay her with runs low,” Ernie explained, following her gaze. “It would take Miss Renie to put a chaise longue in the kitchen.”

  Tammy tucked the name of the chair away in one corner of her mind and went on looking around. The wall beside the stove was hung with stewpans and skillets and egg beaters and spoons, and things such as she had never seen before. There were open shelves with all manner of dishes, flowered and plain and scalloped and straight; glasses, too, beyond counting. There was a real sink and the stove had four holes to cook on at the same time, and there was a shiny white box that mystified her. She had seen a picture——“Oh, but it’s a wonder, this kitchen!” she breathed.