She could hear the hot metal of the car ticking in the sun. It was hers, the only one she ever owned, and that was only for a little over a year. It set high off the road and could go over deep ruts and not get stuck and it could climb any hill in Coushatta County without having to shift gears. The breeze was coming in the car window off the bluebonnets and it felt cool, but his hands were hot wherever they touched her and she kept her eyes closed and could still see the light blue underside of the flowers and the thin line of sweat on his lip and she was ticking all over just like the new car sitting still between the banks of bluebonnets in the sun.
“All this we ask in Thy Name, Amen,” said B. J. and reached for the plate of cornbread. “You can go get the mashed potatoes now, Aunt MayBelle.”
“Yes,” said Myrtle, looking across the table at her, “and another thing too while you’re in the kitchen. You poured me sweet milk in my glass, and you know I’ve got to have clabbermilk at supper.”
Everybody allowed as how the vegetables were real good for this late in the season, but that the blackberry cobbler was a little tart. It was probably because of the dry spell, Barney Lee said, and they all agreed that the wild berries had been hard hit this year and might not even make at all next summer unless they got some relief.
After supper Myrtle and Barney Lee went into the living room to catch the evening news on the Dumont, and B. J. put on his quilted suit and went out with Bubba and the cattle-prod to agitate the Dobermans and German shepherds.
From where she stood by the sinkful of dishes, MayBelle could hear the dogs begin barking and growling as soon as they saw B. J. and Bubba coming toward the pen. She ran some more water into the sink, hot enough to turn her hands red when she reached into it, and she almost let it overflow before she turned off the faucet and started washing. She didn’t break but one dish, the flowered plate off which she had eaten a little okra and a few crowder peas at supper, but dropping it didn’t seem to help the way she felt any.
She stood looking down at the parts it had cracked into on the floor, feeling the heat from the soapy water rising into her chest and face and hearing the TV set booming two rooms away, and decided she would look into the clothes basket again as soon as she had finished in the kitchen.
Outside a dog yipped and Bubba laughed, and MayBelle lifted her eyes to the window over the sink. The back pasture was catching the last rays of the setting sun, and it looked almost gold in the light. But when she looked closer, she could see that the yellow color was in the weeds and sawgrass itself, not just borrowed from the sun, and what looked like haze was really the dry seed pods rattling at the ends of the stalks.
Further up the hill yellowish smoke was rising from one of the cabins in the quarter, perfectly straight up into the sky as far as she could see, not a waver or a bit of motion to it. She stood watching it for a long time, dishcloth in one hand and a soapy glass in the other, until finally her eye was caught by a small figure moving slowly across the back edge of the pasture and disappearing into the dark line of pines that enclosed it.
That’s old Sully, she said to herself, probably picking up kindling or looking at a rabbit trap. Wonder how he stands the heat of a wood cookstove this time of the year. Keeps it going all the time, too, Cora says.
In the living room Barney Lee asked Myrtle something, and she answered him, not loud enough to be understood, and MayBelle went back to the dishwashing, rinsing and setting aside the glass she was holding. It had a wide striped design on it, and it felt right in her hand as she set it on the drainboard to dry.
Picking up speed, she finished the rest of the glassware, the knives and forks, the cooking pots and the cornbread skillet, and then wiped the counters dry and swabbed off the top of the gas stove. By the time she finished turning the coffee pot upside down on the counter next to the sink, the striped glass on the drainboard had dried and a new program had started on the television set. The sounds of a happy bunch of people laughing and clapping their hands came from the front part of the house as MayBelle picked up her glass and walked out of the kitchen toward the back room.
She filled the glass up to the top of where the colored stripe began and took two small sips of the clear bitter liquid. She stopped, held the foreign bottle up to the light and watched the Bear-King while she drained the rest of the glass in one long swallow. A little of the vodka got up her nose, and she almost sneezed but managed to hold it back, belching deeply to keep things balanced. As she did, the Bear-King nodded his head, causing a sparkle of light to flash from his crown, and lifted one paw a fraction. “Thank you, Mr. Communist,” MayBelle said, “I believe I will.”
A few minutes later, Bubba looked up from helping B. J. untangle one of the German shepherds which had got a front foot hung in the wire noose on the end of the cattle-prod, barely avoiding getting a hand slashed as he did, and caught sight of something moving down the hill in the back pasture. But by the time he got around to looking again, after getting the dog loose and back in the pen and the gate slammed shut, whatever it was had got too far off to see through his sweated-up glasses.
“B. J.,” he said and waved toward the back of the house, “was that Aunt MayBelle yonder in the pasture?”
“Where?” said B. J. in a cross voice through the Johnny Bench catcher’s mask. He laid the electric prod down in the dust of the yard and pulled the suit away from his neck so he could blow down his collar. He felt hot enough in the outfit to faint, and the dust kicked up by the last dog had got all up in his face mask, mixing with the sweat and leaving muddy tracks at the corners of his cheeks. “What would she be doing in that weed patch? She’s in the house last I notice.”
“Aw, nothing,” said Bubba. “If it was her, she just checking out the blackberries, I reckon. It don’t make no difference.”
“Bubba,” said B. J. and paused to get his breath and look at the pen of barking dogs in front of him. “I believe Christian Guard Dogs, Incorporated, has made some real progress in the last few days. Look at them fighting and snapping in there. Why, they’d tear a prowler all to pieces in less than two minutes.”
“B. J.,” Bubba answered, “watch this.” He picked up the dead pine limb and rattled the hog wire with it, and immediately the nearest Doberman lunged at the fence, snapping and foaming at the steel wire between its teeth, its eyes narrow and bloodshot.
“That dog there,” Bubba announced in a serious flat voice, “would kill a stray nigger or a doped-up hippie in a New York minute.”
“I figure you got to do what you can,” said B. J., “and if there’s a little honest profit in it for a Christian, it’s nothing wrong with that.” B. J. took off the catcher’s mask and stood for a minute watching the worked-up dogs prowl up and down the pen, baring their teeth at each other as they passed, their tails carried low between their legs and the hair on their backs all roughed up. Then he turned toward his brother and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Let’s go get a drink of water and talk about your business problems, Bubba. The Lord’ll find an answer for you. You just got to give Him a chance.”
The houses were lined up on each side of a dirt road that came up from the patch of weeds to the south and stopped abruptly at the edge of the pasture. In front of the first one on the left, a cabin with two front doors opening into the same room and a window in between them with a pane of unbroken glass still in it, was the body of a ’54 Chevrolet up on blocks. All four wheels had been taken off a long time ago and fastened together with a length of log chain and hung from the lowest limb of an oak tree. The bark on the oak had grown over and around the chain, and the metal of the wheels had fused together with rust.
MayBelle took another sip straight from the bottle and stepped around a marooned two-wheeled tricycle, grown up in bitter weeds, careful not to trip herself up. She walked up on the porch of the next shotgun house and leaned over to peer through a knocked-out window. Her footsteps on the floorboards sounded