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portions of the novel
Some Other Place

Trish Weil

Chapter 6

    She was a sharecropper’s daughter. And if he hadn’t happened to be making some odd deliveries that week, he may never have seen her at all. Her family had moved into town from the country for the fathers and brothers to do hiring-out work. From the outside, the unpainted house looked just the noticeable bit larger and better constructed than the usual shotgun. There was an additional room, besides the kitchen, and a full back porch. What an onlooker couldn’t see was that both these areas had floors that had fallen through to the ground and settled there, now at home in the soil.
    Winslow hitched up and drove in each morning that week, taking a slow pace, his senses pleasurably absorbed. Fall was his favorite season. The days were still warm, but it was cool enough at night by that time that the chill threw up an early mist over the fields. Cattle along the road peered at him in the morning, with some blank but expectant expression, out of what seemed to be white, empty space. He drove into the city limits through the colored section, although being on business, he didn’t strictly have to do it that way. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have noticed the house. But he knew there were women. Young women. These he watched, going and coming. And he overheard the laughter. It was a pretty sound, women laughing together. Womanhood delighted Winslow. And Winslow, at that time in his life, delighted womankind. A tallish, slim fellow with neat little mustache and short beard. Winslow shaved the area around his mouth, so that the beard was little more than an accent. His mouth was large–and so fine, it could have almost been said to be feminine. He had a self-confidence about him—he was an outstanding dancer. He also sang. And he had all the manners of a gentleman—which came easily enough, because Winslow genuinely liked women. He charmed his own mother, did little favors for Birdie. And in turn, the two of them doted on him. For a fact, women were among the finer things of life, by Winslow’s lights. The finest, even. All of them pleased him. But not one of them had ever moved him, in some way that he was waiting to be moved.
    When he passed by in the wagon, Winslow watched for the three young women, distinguished from one another to him at first only by the color of their clothes. Later he would learn that Clarice was the one that often wore the pink blouse—actually, close up, it was red and white striped. There were four of them, it appeared. The three oldest seemed to be around the same age—Mittie, Elvira, and Clarice, he would learn. Then there was Jewel, the much younger one, whom the older ones spoiled and pampered, generally preoccupying themselves with. On the day Winslow first heard the laughter, they had pulled a table into the yard, for the laundry. They were, all three of them, at the pump, with a whole lot of splashing and squealing. It was obvious that all the to-do wasn’t necessary.
    He had noticed that it was the one with the pink blouse who most often came out to the mailbox. He had the definite intention of making the acquaintance of all four of them, but he hadn’t yet decided exactly how to go about it. But Winslow had been hungry on a particular afternoon, had stopped his horse, and taken the notion to walk a few blocks past that house to a nearby store, for a can of sardines and some crackers. So he saw her that first time at the mailbox. Clarice had turned around at the sound of somebody walking. And Winslow didn’t remember if he had actually stopped, or if it only felt like he had. Everything else stopped. There was no one other thing for that moment in time but this woman. Just the look of her. Her face. Although it wasn’t so much the face in itself, which was usual enough, even nondescript; Winslow saw mainly her eyes, which seemed to feel their way deep into his. The eyes were dark and moist as blackberries. And the set of the eyebrows was peculiar—they were straight, but tilted upward slightly toward the bridge of her nose. It gave her face a questioning—to Winslow, a heartfelt—sort of expression. The eyes moved him—the expression in them moved him. Winslow had stared so hard that Clarice was for a few moments frozen, like an animal caught in the glare of a headlight. Was it a matter of seconds—or whole minutes? Winslow didn’t know. He passed on without speaking to her, a thing which wasn’t like him. He was shaken and pleased in some way that was new.
    But he was also, from that instant, determined. He made it his business each day that week to drive by the house, while it was still too early for him to be noticed by anyone in her household. He had nothing that he could give her, with the exception of a bird’s nest. A tiny and round perfect thing, that he had kept for years. He left it for her in the mailbox.
    In the mornings, now, the thought of her was with him the minute he woke. He dawdled his way to the wood shed. He took the long way into town, a sunken dirt road, where there was an overhang of leaves, just slightly touched with color. The change of season, alone, could have put Winslow into a mild delirium—that much he loved the Fall. The air had that touch of new Winter in the mornings. Even more new and special, now, because of her. Winslow moved through his days with all the significance of a man possessed of a secret gladness. He told no one; it was a thing of too much importance to tell, this discovery. He had found her. Out of all days, on one particular afternoon, he had found her. At an everyday spot on the edge of a street. He tormented himself to think that he could have just as easily missed her instead of finding her.

    “Your name?”
    “I be Clarice.” She looked down.
    Clarice. Not something ordinary, like Clara. But Clarice. A beautiful word.
    Neither one of them moved. Then Winslow had taken a step at the same time that Clarice did, and this little trifle made both of them laugh.
    “Beg pardon.”
    Clarice brought her hand to her mouth. There was a special attractiveness to Winslow in a shy woman.
    He had always been one for joking—as a rule, Winslow jollied around when he flirted. But right away he discovered he couldn’t do this with Clarice. She made him quiet. Solemn, almost.
    “Be all right if I call on you, Clarice?”
    She had smiled and moved her head—almost ducked it. A gesture he would come to know well.
    He would call on her, then. Which meant, of course, in a sense, that he would call on all four of them. With the others he would do the usual teasing and carrying-on. But then, the others seemed to know when to drift away, even the youngest one, Jewel. He was for Clarice– when they had feared that there would be no one for Clarice! And with Clarice he was different, because she made him feel things that were new. It was in nothing particular that she did—Winslow was aware of that, from the first; but he was in no mind to ask himself questions. What she made him feel was that hard-to-say thing he had waited for, imagined, wanted to happen. A thing very close, he thought with surprise, to some kind of reverence. It seemed fitting to Winslow that his courtship should take place in the Fall, when all the world sang its lapse into Winter. The two of them sat together toward the side of the house where he had first heard the girls laughing. Light lay over the yard like a patina. All of it touched with this same, unexpected new-like feeling. He liked to sit with her as the afternoon faded into dark.
    He was a talker. She wasn’t. And this—he wouldn’t admit it until much later—was his first small disappointment. His love for conversation, however, had been noted with great relief. At first the sisters had knotted at the side of the house, tense with apprehension. Would it be all right? Would she ruin it all? They collectively held their breath. And gradually each had begun to breathe freely again. At some point they abandoned the eavesdropping altogether. He was a talker, this one–and what a talker! How fortunate for Clarice that he was also mannerly and good-looking. Enough so that one or two of the others may have found herself contriving her own flirtation. If it had been any of them but Clarice. No. Never a thing like that, where Clarice was concerned–she could never have taken care of herself.
    For his own part, Winslow had thought that when he got her away to himself, away from all of the sisters, or when she had time to get past her shyness, then she would talk; and he would listen. He looked forward to listening to Clarice. Clarice sat very still. She could sit at any length, it seemed, with her hands lying in her lap, to listen or wait—whatever was required of her. But Winslow was a talker who, for all his love of it, knew just as well how to listen. So Winslow, too, waited. He couldn’t have said, then, exactly for what. At last it had happened, he felt, that he, she, could unburden their hearts—although there was nothing in Winslow’s heart at that time but contentment to unburden. And she would understand him in some way that no one else had ever been able to. But it didn’t happen that way. He talked to her, instead, about little things. And that pleasured him. Everything pleasured him—he was foolishly, deliriously, in love. His stories were for the most part simple or silly stories, and those made her laugh. He felt a jump in his heart at her laughter. He’d talk to her about little nothing sorts of things, some ordinary sight he had seen. Sometimes Clarice just looked back at him, as though she were waiting for him to get to the point. Animals had always amused Winslow; and he blandly assumed at that time that any amusement of his would appeal to her, too. Had she ever noticed, he wondered, the expression on a calf’s face when it suckled, little head bobbing up and down so fast. Grateful-looking—looked outright grateful, it did. Then the squint-eyed, patient look of the mother while she stood there, waiting for it all to be over. For a fact, animals had a right way about things that human kind didn’t seem to have. Clarice looked at him blankly, then.
    She could have been interested in gossip. But Winslow wasn’t. And he didn’t understand the difference, yet, between gossip and talk about people. People had interested Winslow since he was a boy. Had she ever noticed that old Mr. and Mrs. Givens looked about enough alike to be twins? She wasn’t interested. And there was that young couple who’d had to take a house right next to the Mack’s store, which was at the end of a run-down block for whites. That story seemed to interest her a little. Winslow was touched by the little signs of settling in that the young wife made, the one-piece curtains, the geraniums set out in a lard can. Something about its being their first place to themselves—a sad, gray little place, but theirs, all the same. But Clarice had lost interest, when she realized there was nothing more rewarding to hear. And Winslow was interested in far more than just talk. Her breasts were still of course forbidden him; he could imagine the luxurious softness of them under his hand. But he knew he would have to wait. He would have liked to take little tastes from a spot on her neck just beneath her ear—which by itself worked its influence on Winslow.
    It astonished him, later, that even young as he was, he hadn’t required something more. Clarice was more predictable than any child.
    “You be foolin’.” “Have mercy!” “Well, then.” For the most part, these were her replies to whatever he had to offer. But Winslow found her quietness fitting. And so they conversed like this, quietly, back and forth, while the Fall noise of crickets twisted through the air like the sound of birds twittering. When Clarice did talk to him, it was a little breathily, as if she were relishing her bit of news or just recovering from the flurry of it—there was always a flurry, with the sisters. She spoke of little domestic events, generally. And at those times when Winslow’s look grew too intense, she ducked her head. Her life to Winslow seemed simple and good, in the way that bread was simple and good.

    But why was he carried back to all of this, now? Winslow wondered what had set him off, remembering—he considered that he’d long ago worn all of it out. He suspected that it had something to do with his talks with the Jemson fellow, the fellow being so different and all. And being white, free to do just what he wanted. It thrilled Winslow a little to think of that, being a young man like that, white and free and able to do pretty much anything. He had suspected at first that the fellow had a sweetheart, back in Mobile. Maybe that idea had done it, started him off on the thoughts that led back to Clarice.
    Winslow moved around the barn with his thinking. But he wasn’t absentminded, for all his revery. He had milked Buttercup, who had just calved and had to be milked morning and evening. He’d carefully soaped and sponged the teats, as he always did, talking to the cow as he worked. Dick and Doc needed their evening ration of fodder. For all his denial of it, Winslow knew good and well that Doc kicked, and kicked hard—he wouldn’t let anyone else go near the mule. It was agreeable to Winslow to be alone with his animals. And he’d always liked the smell of the barn—he kept his stalls clean. He kept his tools greased and ranged—there was a repair shed that opened up as a lean-to, near the stalls. Winslow had put in some rough shelving; and at the end of one row, there was a single decorated square tin. Bag Balm, it was called. A pretty little enameled green box with a cow’s head and red clover flowers on top. It sat on the shelf next to the shed wall, where no one would ever touch it. And it no longer contained liniment, but was lead-like with coins. Nellie’s piano lesson money, Winslow told himself.
    The barn dimmed, as the light began to drain from the afternoon. Along with the odor of hay, there was the bitter and homey scent of wood smoke, drifting out from the kitchen. He couldn’t smell what was cooking. They were simple, competent cooks, Birdie and Clarice. They made no effort to do anything different or out-of-the-way—but Winslow had never minded that. Birdie was a manager, more than she was one for domestic flourishes. Their mother had been one for the special touches, when she could manage them. Winslow remembered with particular affection the way she’d take the trouble to crack and pick hickory nuts. But she was, for the most part, a plain country woman. She’d had a fondness for the color yellow—a fondness they liked to tease her about. But all of them remembered. And one Christmas they’d bought her a string of amber beads, which she loved above all things. Winslow remembered catching his mother at times on an afternoon wearing the beads to do housework. He’d make a point of noticing that small fact in such a way that his mother would smile self-consciously and touch the beads. She liked a little bit of sunshine, she explained.
    Then, that other time with Clarice was suddenly with him again–when he thought he had beaten it down. Driven it out.
    Clarice never seemed to have had any such special fondnesses—he couldn’t imagine why that was so. When they were first married, he had looked forward to discovering the little mysteries of how she lived. What her nightclothes looked like, the way she might unbraid and rebraid her hair, whatever little trinket she might have that especially pleased her. But there were no such things, no little gestures to hang a picture or memory on. Clarice simply did whatever it was she thought she should do. With no complaint about it—he couldn’t reproach her for that. The fact was that he couldn’t reproach her for anything, which was why his long anger against her had at first so confused him. The thing of it, he figured at last, was that she seemed to have no special fondness for him, either—beyond that gentle, absent sort of affection that she had for the children. Winslow sighed, without even realizing that he’d drawn the breath. It was long gone, now, all the questioning. At one time it had driven him half mad.
    “Do you love me, Clarice?” He remembered.
    “Why, Winnie—.” She was hemming a blanket for one of the babies. She stared, her hands dropped to her lap.
    When would that have happened? Not during the first years—he hadn’t realized yet, then. Winslow had stayed on in town, to work at the ice house. They’d rented a little house around the corner from her family’s place. There was so much going and coming with all the sisters–who seemed oddly protective—and so many family meals, that maybe they’d been too crowded at first for him to realize. There were also Clarice’s brothers, Obie and Dewitt, who dropped in on Winslow—he was fond of them. And there was his own family. He was wild for the nights, when he could have Clarice all to himself—he lost any semblance of thought then. And Clarice wasn’t withholding. She was generous—kind, because it was her nature to be kind; to have been otherwise would have cost her an effort. And the babies had started right away. He remembered, with the first one, imagining the baby inside Clarice’s just slightly distended belly, which he kissed all over, like he would have the baby, itself. He loved the very blood that moved under her skin, her breath, her taste, every bodily thing about her. Being good with a tune; he sang little foolish love songs, in those days, to Clarice.
    If I had a nickel, I tell you what I’d do. He was a man made right and whole. I’d spend it all on candy, and give it all to you.
    Clarice was good with the babies. As she’d been affectionate, devoted even, with her sisters. He remembered being moved by her fondness for the others, especially the youngest one, whom she touched often, on the face or the sleeve. She was gentle and easy with the children. Again, he saw that same touch to a face, a collar or sleeve. But he could never recall, once he began to listen for it, hearing her actually converse with any of them. She was a presence. They were a presence. In the beginning, her silences had made her seem special—she didn’t just give herself away, cheap. Or so he had thought.
    Then there was that night when it came clear to him, when Winslow found himself sitting alone in the wagon, sitting and wondering. He was outside the Kilbourne house, waiting to drive them around the corner to home. Clarice and the children were still inside. One of them, Roland maybe—he couldn’t remember—had a birthday. There’d been a cake and a whole lot of fuss, laughter and noise making. Winslow remembered that he was cold; he’d started to shiver a bit, there on the seat. But his stomach was hot. He had realized. And he didn’t know what to do about what he had realized. He was as good as alone. That empty place inside him that had wanted her—she didn’t fill it up. He wasn’t comforted; he was wanting. And she didn’t see him. It came to Winslow that she didn’t actually hear him or see him. He was just one more human object that crossed her line of vision. He was a fact of life for her. A circumstance. She didn’t know him or recognize him. Another person altogether could have slipped into his skin; she wouldn’t have known the difference. Just as later, when he had ceased to love her, she didn’t know that difference, either.
    No. There was no reproach he could make. There was nothing in particular that she had done against him. To the rest of the world she would have seemed a good and gentle creature. She was no doubt spoken of as shy, Winslow once reflected. Only Winslow knew. She wasn’t shy. She was vacant. He thought he had loved a woman; but there was no woman there, in the way he had wanted a woman. It came to him later that there was no fault involved—nobody at fault, that is, but himself. For being too stupid in love to have seen her as she truly was. Blind fool, he had been, to have come to her, like he had. Had always been a plumb fool, he thought now, where his feelings were concerned–he couldn’t have said whether or not other men had such strong feelings. Why, to look at him, Winslow Wright, the farmer, no one would have ever suspected. Yet he sometimes had a vague sense of himself as a man in some ways set apart. He’d shame himself, though, for this feeling—there was no cause for it; Winslow would have described himself as the most ordinary of men. An aging colored man of no consequence. But about his daughter, Nellie, he could indulge himself. Now, there was one that was not ordinary. Loved her he would have, even if she had been ordinary; because she was his own. But no, his girl was special–marked, even. And for her, things would be different. It was an important word: different. He couldn’t have said, even, exactly what it would entail. In some way, she had a natural right to what he would not have dared lay claim to for himself–nor any of his race hope to lay claim to. But life would give itself, in armfuls, to Nellie. She would have what she wanted, in whatever way that was possible. He would see to it that she did.

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