Full Dark, No Stars

“No. It isn’t. As I’ve told you both a thousand times.” She sipped her wine, and instead of putting the glass down as she had before, she held it. The orange light above the western horizon was

deepening to an otherworldly green-purple that seemed to burn in the glass.

“If it were St. Louis, that would be a different thing.”

“I’ve given that idea up,” she said. Which meant, of course, that she had investigated the possibility and found it problematic. Behind my back, of course. Al of it behind my back except for the

company lawyer. And she would have done that behind my back as wel , if she hadn’t wanted to use it as a club to beat me with.

“Wil they buy the whole piece, do you think?” I asked. “Al 180 acres?”

“How would I know?” Sipping. The second glass half-empty. If I told her now that she’d had enough and tried to take it away from her, she’d refuse to give it up.

“You do, I have no doubt,” I said. “That 180 acres is like St. Louis. You’ve investigated.”

She gave me a shrewd sidelong look… then burst into harsh laughter. “P’raps I have.”

“I suppose we could hunt for a house on the outskirts of town,” I said. “Where there’s at least a field or two to look at.”

“Where you’d sit on your ass in a porch-rocker al day, letting your wife do the work for a change? Here, fil this up. If we’re celebrating, let’s celebrate.”

I fil ed both. It only took a splash in mine, as I’d taken but a single swal ow.

“I thought I might look for work as a mechanic. Cars and trucks, but mostly farm machinery. If I can keep that old Farmal running”—I gestured with my glass toward the dark hulk of the tractor standing beside the barn—“then I guess I can keep anything running.”

“And Henry talked you into this.”

“He convinced me it would be better to take a chance at being happy in town than to stay here on my own in what would be sure misery.”

“The boy shows sense and the man listens! At long last! Hal elujah!” She drained her glass and held it out for more. She grasped my arm and leaned close enough for me to smel sour grapes on her

breath. “You may get that thing you like tonight, Wilf.” She touched her purple-stained tongue to the middle of her upper lip. “That nasty thing.”

“I’l look forward to that,” I said. If I had my way, an even nastier thing was going to happen that night in the bed we had shared for 15 years.

“Let’s have Henry down,” she said. She had begun to slur her words. “I want to congratulate him on final y seeing the light.” (Have I mentioned that the verb to thank was not in my wife’s vocabulary?

Perhaps not. Perhaps by now I don’t need to.) Her eyes lit up as a thought occurred to her. “We’l give ’im a glass of wine! He’s old enough!” She elbowed me like one of the old men you see sitting on the benches that flank the courthouse steps, tel ing each other dirty jokes. “If we loosen his tongue a little, we may even find out if he’s made any time with Shannon Cotterie… li’l baggage, but she’s got pretty hair, I’l give ’er that.”

“Have another glass of wine first,” said the Conniving Man.

She had another two, and that emptied the bottle. (The first one.) By then she was singing “Avalon” in her best minstrel voice, and doing her best minstrel eye-rol s. It was painful to see and even more painful to hear.

I went into the kitchen to get another bottle of wine, and judged the time was right to cal Henry. Although, as I’ve said, I was not in great hopes. I could only do it if he were my wil ing accomplice, and in my heart I believed that he would shy from the deed when the talk ran out and the time actual y came. If so, we would simply put her to bed. In the morning I would tel her I’d changed my mind about sel ing my father’s land.

Henry came, and nothing in his white, woeful face offered any encouragement for success. “Poppa, I don’t think I can,” he whispered. “It’s Mama.”

“If you can’t, you can’t,” I said, and there was nothing of the Conniving Man in that. I was resigned; what would be would be. “In any case, she’s happy for the first time in months. Drunk, but happy.”

“Not just squiffy? She’s drunk?”

“Don’t be surprised; getting her own way is the only thing that ever makes her happy. Surely 14 years with her is long enough to have taught you that.”

Frowning, he cocked an ear to the porch as the woman who’d given him birth launched into a jarring but word-for-word rendition of “Dirty McGee.” Henry frowned at this barrelhouse bal ad, perhaps

because of the chorus (“She was wil in’ to help him stick it in / For it was Dirty McGee again”), more likely at the way she was slurring the words. Henry had taken the Pledge at a Methodist Youth

Fel owship Camp-Out on Labor Day weekend of the year before. I rather enjoyed his shock. When teenagers aren’t turning like weathervanes in a high wind, they’re as stiff as Puritans.

“She wants you to join us and have a glass of wine.”

“Poppa, you know I promised the Lord I would never drink.”