And there was a host of them. Men dropped by the drugstore all the time, flirting and asking her out. Their hungry eyes and grinning, greedy mouths frightened her, and she remembered what her mother had said. Hazel could tell that all they had an appetite for was the dewy part.
But the minute Floyd walked into the store, she began hoping he was the one she’d been waiting for. She wondered, is this how true love shows itself? Can a complete stranger walk into your life on a fine Indian summer afternoon while you are stacking tubes of lipstick, and then, just like that—in the twinkle of a mirrored eye and the flash of a toothy smile—all your hoping suddenly pays off, and life is never the same? Is that the way it’s supposed to work? Can something that happens so quickly be counted on to last a lifetime?
Chapter Two
THE VIEW FROM DELPHI
They had been dating a few weeks and were seated in their usual booth at Donna’s Dairy Bar. Hazel could tell something was on his mind by the way Floyd attacked his butter pecan as if it were a chore to be got out of the way.
Then he took a deep breath. “Ain’t no reason to go on doing something just ’cause it was done before us,” he firmly asserted. “There’s plenty of other ways for a man to make a living than farming. Don’t you agree, Hazel?”
Hazel was taken aback, not at what he said. It was the way he said it, as if he had rehearsed the words beforehand in a mirror, and now he was acting out his little speech just for her. While she studied him curiously, he tilted his head to the side and smiled the way he did when he wanted her to answer a certain way. The idea that her response was so important caused Hazel’s heart to pound like the drum in the homecoming parade. She said, “You right about that, Floyd. Why, they’s many a man who get themselves a good route and never look back.”
When Floyd’s face lit up, Hazel knew she had said the right thing.
“Selling! You reading my mind. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.” He leaned in over the table and let her in on his secret. “You see, I read a book while I was off in the Pacific.” His tone was reverential. “It was called There’s No Future in Looking Back: The Science of Controlled Thinking. Writ by a preacher who ciphered out a hidden code in the Bible. The ‘knock and ye shall receive’ part. He went on to make a fortune selling soap door-to-door.”
“I swan.”
“I’ll let you read it one day, but it all comes down to this. You are what you think. And your mind can be trained like any other muscle. Say your leg or your arm muscle.”
Floyd’s eyes were shining, and he was speaking with such authority Hazel felt chill bumps on her arms.
“Hazel, an untrained mind spends all its time looking back on things it can’t do nothing about. This preacher says if you keep your mind focused on what you want and think positive thoughts, you bound to get what you after. He says it’s right from the Savior’s own mouth. To cut the tail off the dog, it’s changed my life.”
“Already?”
He smiled shyly. “Met you, didn’t I?”
“Floyd.”
“Plus, the other day I got a letter from this ol’ boy that was on my ship at Pearl Harbor. He said he could get me a job selling these mechanical cotton pickers to the big Delta planters.”
“The Delta? I heard of that.”
“Sure. That’s where all the money is. Clear on the other side of the state from here. Cotton as high as a man and stretching as far as the eye can see. All being handpicked by a million niggers.”
“A million? I swan.”
“As soon as I get Daddy’s crop put in, I’m buying my bus passage to Delphi, all the way over in Hopalachie County. You never gonna catch me looking at the south end of a mule again.”
“Nothing I hate worse than seeing a man married to a mule.” Then she blushed, afraid she might have mentioned marriage too soon, even if it was in reference to a mule.
“Hazel, you and me think the same.” Floyd reached for her hand. “When I go on out to the Delta, would you wait for me—till I got some money saved up?”
He grinned, but he didn’t need to coax. Floyd’s plan was so big with hope, Hazel believed she could live off the anticipation for years. By the time he sent for her, maybe she would be ready to give whatever it was a wife was supposed to give up to a man.
“Hazel. . .” he said, and she felt the squeeze of his hand, “would you. . .I mean. . .”
She looked into his eyes to find herself, and she liked what she saw. “Floyd Graham, I ain’t budging till you come and get me.”
Floyd hadn’t lied one bit.
On a coolish spring day, Hazel said good-bye to her landlady and stepped onto her broad green porch, a cardboard suitcase in her hand. Her makeup was careful, and she wore bright red earbobs and a cotton print dress splashed with roses so big they threatened to bloom right off the cloth. Her toenails, which were on view for the world to see in a pair of fancy strapped shoes, were like ten rose petals fallen from her dress. When Floyd took her arm to lead her to his car, she noticed he squeezed a little tighter than necessary, seeing as how she wasn’t the least bit inclined to go anyplace but where he led.
After a stop at the justice of the peace, they headed straight west, the Tombigbee Hills to their backs and the Delta in their sights. They were man and wife, muleless, betting their futures on an easy smile and an irresistible tilt of the head.
The farther they drove, the more the geography began to straighten out and lose its rocky ruggedness. “Is this the Delta?” she asked every time she believed things couldn’t get any flatter.
“Not by a long shot,” Floyd kept saying. “Wait till we get to Hopalachie County. That’s where God invented flat.”
When the terrain began to lift once more, Hazel became confused. “Looks like the hills are taking over again.” There was disappointment in her voice. “Did we miss the Delta?”
This time Floyd didn’t say anything. No way he could explain that what they were driving on was not a mountain of rock but a gigantic rim of river silt, windblown and piled over millions of years, and that these fragile bluffs contained the great floodplain like the cliffs contain the ocean. So instead of telling her, Floyd waited for her to see it for herself.
Finally, drawing the car into a shallow curve, Floyd cut the engine. “Let’s go for a little walk. I got something to show you.”
Hazel followed Floyd across a shallow ditch to a locust-post fence entwined with Carolina jasmine. After pulling up one wire strand with his hand and stepping on the bottom one with his foot, Floyd waited patiently for Hazel to gather her skirt and squeeze through. He led her up a rise crowded with oak and hickory, and then told her to shut her eyes. When she did, he reached for her arm and guided her to the top of the bluff. Again Hazel noticed how tight his grip was. Did he think she was going to bolt down the hill without him?
“Now open,” he said.
The sight made Hazel shudder. Spread out below her was the Delta, miles and miles of flatness stretching relentlessly to some foreign horizon, China perhaps. Nothing was hidden from sight. She saw vast open fields of black earth ready for planting and green ribbons of cypress swamps snaking through the terrain and lakes strewn about like pieces of a giant’s broken mirror, and not a single rising or falling to ease the unyielding openness of it all.
The spectacle