Too Long in the Company of Rain

Daisy stretches her cotton stocking well above her knee and rolls the top in her elastic garter till it’s tight. She hauls herself out of a cat-scratched, partially unstuffed chair and pours day-old tea from the bucket into a jelly jar to drink. Rain rattles on the tin roof, an unwelcome noise on a cold April day. Daisy likes it quiet enough to listen to her thoughts. She is cold in spite of her gray sweater, so shuffling into her bedroom, she pulls a flannel shirt from the pile of covers and puts it on.

            It’s winter’s last grab, she thinks to herself. Dying like Slim, cold heaves and a sucking wind. Daisy kicks an empty peanut butter jar under the table as she walks to the closet and rumbles through old magazines in stacks on the floor. She picks up a used copy of National Geographic and flips through it. Grady’s eyes have, by looking at the photographs, faded the colors. Glaciers, the wonders of the Arctic, snow-banked Alaskan bears, ice fishermen, all washed out.

            Daisy turns the pages, references to a place unrealized by her manner of living, the passing of minutes uncounted except by numbers on pages. Grady wants to go where there is snow. Or no snow. He just wants to go. He’s always on the road. Always wanting a car.

            The rain scrabbles down the tin roof and falls loud as bullets into wood barrels positioned at corners of the house to catch rainwater.

            She plans to take a bath soon as it warms up again, but with little firewood in the box, she has to preserve what warmth is in her creaking body. Creaks like a door hinge when she sits down, creaks when she gets up. Time put a warp in her bones, no way to get it out, not even with the camphor oil she rubs on them at bedtime.

            She looks at the knots and spurs her knuckles tolerate. Time is trapped in the bony balloons of her knuckles. She pinches the calcified knobs. She once thought a needle and a puncture would release time, but the balls are like rock formations, unyielding. Bedamned if she is going to cut into her own fingers.

            Grady says the tundra of Alaska is where camphor comes from, mined like cough drops from under the snow.

            Daisy wrestles herself up and rounds the chair toward the extra room. Extra since Slim died. The bed is covered with leftover things she may need—cardboard boxes, some filled with empty mason jars or worn shoes. On Slim’s dresser are bean and okra seeds for a garden, empty egg cartons (for the eggs she finds in the yard), a .22 pistol, a tin bucket with a pinhole in the bottom (she is going to fix it when she gets a screw and a washer). A hoe with a cracked handle leans against the wall, and she doesn’t know when she’ll get that fixed. In the corner on the floor are Slim’s brogans, a man’s army coat, several empty feed sacks, and a fish trap. In a chair with a broken back are plastic roses so faded they were either red or yellow. Underneath and out of sight are older things, many of them belonging to Slim.

            She looks in a box containing scraps of paper, ink pens without ink, a jewelry box with unglued velour linings, several loose beads and shiny stones, metal links of a chain, and a box of toothpicks. Daisy, who has a fingernail that snags everything, is looking for the clippers. Underneath the jewelry box are Slim’s eyeglasses.

            They wanted to bury him with his glasses, but Daisy said no. He didn’t no more’n sleep with his glasses on than a blind man. Some people wanted him to look like he did when they’d seen him, but Daisy wanted him to look like he was asleep. Grady said he could see where Slim’s eyelashes was glued shut. Daisy didn’t care; she kept the glasses anyway.

            Today she tries them on again, but she can’t see any better. Her eyes bother her. It is Slim inside her head. He makes her eyes feel weak and pulled, like there’s a drawstring inside getting tighter. Slim’s trying to take away what she can see. One time he took away what she thought. But Daisy learned him to stay out of her mind. The clippers aren’t in the box, so she goes back to the sitting room.

            On a table in the corner is an ashtray from Stone Mountain, Georgia, and inside the ashtray are several tacks, a dog whistle, casing for a .22 caliber bullet, a used stamp, a picture of Grady in the first grade, and the clippers.

            Daisy sits back down and begins to clip at her fingernail but draws up short. The cutting always hurts, but today is unbearable. She studies her fingernail and feels the trimmed edge, rubbing around the bony notches. Just as she suspects, the cut breathes. Like last time. The cool escape of air, which can’t be tolerated, is stopped when she puts the cut fingernail in her mouth and bites on it.

            She steps outside onto the wood slats of the porch, and in spite of the drizzle surrounding her and washing away her thoughts, Daisy remembers to pick up several pieces of fat lighterd to build a fire. She looks in all directions for Slim. He is usually behind bad business like water strokes. Aunt Essie had one when Daisy was a child. Didn’t know her own name. Died too. Without ever getting right again.

            Inside, away from the weather, she stuffs the potbellied stove with wads of paper and lighterd and strikes a match on the iron side. As the flame catches and spreads, Daisy holds her knobby hands before it, the heat flushing her fingers. She stares at blazes flapping out the opening, as hot as the devil’s tongue. She slams and latches the heavy door.

            On top of the stove, she heats rainwater in a wash pan. Into it, she drops a small cracked paint rock and sticks the fingers of first one hand into the warm water to soak. She raises her hand, and as if she is milking a teat, squeezes the purpled water from her wrists to the ends of her fingers. She repeats the process on the other hand. It feels good to wring out the ill will that has crept into her fingers. Makes her feel better about the rain strumming the roof.

            In the winter, she stores salted fatback on the rafters, but several days have been warm, too warm to keep meat overhead. In the closet, where it’s cooler, Daisy straddles magazines to dig out a thick slab of fatback from among the water jugs. The butcher knife for slicing fatback, usually on the shelf, is missing.

            Daisy looks for it among cramped jars of tomatoes, paper sacks of dry peas, rice, grits, and a crock of lard. She has probably hid the knife. It’s not unusual for Daisy to forget the hiding place, and if need be, she can slice the meat with a paring knife she keeps for peeling apples. The butcher knife is too dangerous to keep in plain view. Slim said he’d use it to cut out the devil, so Daisy protected herself and learned to hide it. Thing is, Daisy discovered Slim was the devil himself.

            It wasn’t no way he could fool her after she figured out the truth of the matter. It was revealed to her when he said he wanted to put wires to the house to bring in electricity. But Daisy knew what the wires was connected to, and she wouldn’t allow it in their house. Just like it says in the Bible, “Ye walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” The wires are highways in the air for the prince of darkness, and sure enough, Slim wanted a television set.

            Wasn’t no television coming into her house, not long as breath was in her body. It’s a force of evil that gives off lights that get in your brain and take over your mind. One time Daisy saw a television at Sadie’s house, but she covered her eyes to keep the man on the screen from getting inside her. Sadie is lost to the dark airwaves, but she’s weak in flesh, full of desire.

            Daisy cuts off three rough-hewn slices of fatback, places them flat in the iron skillet, and puts it on the hot stove. If she could find the butcher knife, she would fry enough fatback for two days, saving herself the effort of building a fire the next day. Beside the skillet is a small pot of grits.

            When the rain stops, she puts on Slim’s rubber boots and goes to the henhouse to see if there are eggs in the nests. Bending low to dodge a dropped board and at the same time stepping high to clear the baseboard at the door, she enters the small coop she built for her chickens. Several pullets puff up, ready to flap. The white layer clucks like her throat’s laying an egg. The red hen sits and looks at Daisy from first one side of her head then the other. It’s the most dependable layer, and Daisy eases up on her. To ward off a bad feeling, she whispers, “For it is written, eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God hath prepared for them that love him.” The red hen watches suspiciously as Daisy’s hand calmly reaches under her hood of feathers and takes two eggs. Daisy scratches off dried squat and rubs the shells against her skirt as she turns back to the door.

            A heavy drizzle starts again, the air too wet to support a mist. Daisy’s stiff and aching joints move awkwardly to maneuver up the steps to the small porch. “I’m chilled to the bones. It’s like death getting inside me,” she says out loud, so Slim can hear. His voice slips into the rain and calls her by name. Calls her in the twisted streams falling from the roof and then from afar in the watery voice of the pine trees. “Daisy,” his voice fades away so she’ll follow and get so cold inside she’s as dead as he is. Daisy knows better than to listen to him calling her. She followed him one night, nearly to Black Creek. He’d a drowned her in the creek if she’d a followed him all the way.

            Back inside, the fatback sends up grease-choked smoke. Daisy turns the slices of meat and stirs the grits, which have sunk to the bottom of the warm water. She considers frying both eggs. After all, Grady may want one. He doesn’t want no half-cooked egg though. Yesterday he throwed the egg at her because the yellow was runny. She ought not fix him an egg at all. Except he’ll come in and eat hers, and then she’ll have to cook the other one while her grits get cold and stiff. She watches the fatback, still hissing.

            Grady is like his father. No ambition. Except to get drunk. She’s not going to give her bed to him again. It’s been less than a week, and he has her bed smelling like a sot. Besides, she doesn’t like sleeping in Slim’s bed with all the junk, not to mention the lumps in the mattress. The vague idea comes to her that she should plan a way to keep him out of the house. It’s not like she’s turning out a child. Damnation! He’s at least 35 years old. She can’t remember how old he is, but his birthday is sometime in the spring. Could be this month.

            She remembers birthing him though. Slim didn’t even go for Aunt Myrtie for help. He sat on the porch and smoked cigarettes while she screamed out the youngun. When it was over and Grady was born, his head bruised and wrinkled, Slim came inside to tell her he was going to the store. She was tired as a mule, shaking like a leaf, sitting in a puddle of blood. The baby was crying, and he took off. Just like that. Wounded roots that didn’t heal.

            She forks up the fatback into a discolored plate and breaks one egg into the grease remaining in the fry pan. In a couple of minutes, she shovels the fork under the egg and doubles it over. The ruptured yellow puddles in the pan. She doesn’t care what it looks like as long as it tastes like fried egg.

            Sitting in the straw-bottom chair at the table, she begins to eat. Rain thumps harder on the tin and washes in streams across the window. She’s considering some kind of extra lock, maybe a board to latch across the door. But he might kick it down or come in by the window. If she locks herself in her bedroom, then she’ll be the one locked in, instead of him being locked out. She wishes Grady had stayed in the Army or anywhere else.

            After Slim died—and it was the Lord’s work, it was in the Bible, the false prophets bring upon themselves swift destruction—she had the house to herself. Sometimes evil tries to reach up out of the grave and snag the hearts of good-minded people. Grady is Slim come back. Daisy has to be guarded against his evil.

            “Dai-sy!” the rain calls her name, but she eats grits and stares at the clapboard wall. Since the outside and inside wall is the same, sounds easily slip through fractions of knotholes. Sounds like Grady. Maybe he wants her to come outside so he can slip inside and lock the door again. Like he done when he come back for a visit last winter. Daisy remembers the night of sleeping in the corner of the chicken coop to keep from freezing.

            “Go away,” she says to the meat skins left over from the fatback. “Go away,” she says to the few grains of grits left in her plate. “Go away,” she says to the fire, growing faint and shuffling like a voice coming through ashes. Daisy doesn’t dare go to the porch for more firewood as long as Grady is in the woods calling her name.

            She peeks out the front window. Her translucent blue eyes strain to see past the rain. Somebody taps on glass in Slim’s bedroom. Daisy turns around and walks to the doorway where she sees Grady’s face, soaking wet, at the far window. What’s he doing there? Did he come to the door? Daisy hasn’t been paying attention, and now she’s afraid he will hit her on the head like Slim did when he got mad. “Dai-sy!” She hears as she closes the bedroom door so as not to see the face. Now she’s really crossed him. And him probably drunk. She’d better hide the gun, or he’ll shoot her.

            She goes back into the bedroom and picks up the .22. At the window, Grady’s vile eyes are black. His mouth opens, and she hears, “Dai-sy!” but it’s Slim’s voice outside the house.

            “I knew it!” Daisy exclaims, aiming the revolver at the window. “I knew it was you, Slim!” She pulls the trigger several times, but the pistol doesn’t discharge. Looking for bullets, she jerks at a dresser drawer, which is jammed. “Daisy!” Rain blurs the features of the face, and Daisy can’t be sure whether it looks like Slim or Grady.

            No matter the look, it’s Slim returned for her. She might a knowed he’d cheat death and come back to get her. But she will not be faint this time. As if all her life she has been preparing for this fight, she stifles fear and loneliness. Out of her weakness will come the strength of Samson. Satan will turn and run from her.

            Daisy finds bullets in one of the many boxes under Slim’s bed and loads the chambers. “At last,” she says loudly above the roar of the rain, “the dog is turned to his own vomit and the sow to her wallowing in the mire.” She points the barrel at the window and pulls the trigger. Nothing happens. She tries again.

            “Dai-sy! Dai-sy!” The angry voice wilts Daisy’s courage.

            She throws the pistol at the window. It slams against the wall and discharges a bullet that strikes her in the left eye. She doesn’t hear the steady hum of rain in the pines or the lonely woods as she falls to the floor.

---

---