Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [204]
She came to tell Grace about Gary. At Speed's, nobody knew she had a son in the penitentiary. One lady even said, "You are a fortunate person to have lived as long as you have, and haven't had one heartbreak in your entire life."
Grace thought Bessie had a remarkable voice. It was not exactly cultivated or grand, but it sure was unusual. Bette Davis playing a pioneer woman. Grace asked to see a picture of Bessie when young, and thought she was beautiful then. Grace decided that what had rubbed off on Bessie over the years was stoicism.
Their conversation only ended when Bessie had to go to work.
She left wearing a white blouse and dark skirt and navy blue sweater.
Carried an apron over her arm. She was wearing flats, and did not walk like a woman who had once been told she would make a good ballet dancer. The arthritis was already in her hands and in her knees and ankles.
Grace drove her, and had a cup of coffee, and watched her picking up plates at Speed's. She was appalled that Bess had to do such work.
The woman stayed on her mind. Bess, living in that haunted house, and wanting to keep it. Grace would visit Bess from time to time and talk to her about taxes and the Church. Later, after it was alI lost, other stories came out, and Grace would wonder why Bess ever wanted to keep the place. "The house was haunted, Grace," she told her once, "No one but me would have stayed so long. If you were to go upstairs, you would have felt it. One night when my husband was very sick, just a few months before he died, he got up and started down the hall to the bathroom and fell down those stairs with a terrible sound. It was almost as if something grabbed him and hurled him to the very bottom. His long years of acrobatic training is all that kept him from getting killed. I screamed as I went past, and I was banging on every one of the boys' doors. 'Get up, your father's fallen down.' They came running out, and Frank Jr. picked him up and carried him back. Then, after Frank Sr. died, I and Mikal got ready to go to bed one night, and in the hallway on the ground floor, between the bedroom and the kitchen, I heard the worst noise ever in my life. It was a frightening place to live, really."
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Of course, Grace only heard those stories after Mikal was in college, and Bess was in the trailer she had bought with a little help from the Church and the sale of her Philippine mahogany furniture.
Bessie mentioned that on Sunday, the only day she was free from work, there was no round-trip bus service between Portland and Salem. Grace said, "There's no reason why I can't take you over to the prison." The visits were only twice a month and Grace's kids were married. She had no heavy family obligations. Besides, Grace loved to read. She took along a book to enjoy in the car while waiting through the visit, and they had a fine time driving there and back, and talked about witches. Bessie said she was only a step away from being a creature of the woods. She respected witches, she said, and didn't want to be in their powers. "Do you know," she said, "I'm frightened of riding in a car next to someone who has dealings with them, because I believe they can wreck your car. One has to be on guard against every strong and evil vibration that comes along."
Grace sat in the car for a couple of hours that day and read her book while Bessie was inside the prison. Afterward, Bessie said that Gary had put Grace's name on the visiting list. Grace had no particular interest in meeting him, but thought, Well, if Bessie wants this, okay.
The visits went on for two years. They went almost every other week. Sometimes they would get there and the authorities would say, You can't see him today. He is in the pokey, all locked up. They would never tell Bess before she came.
The first time that Grace went into the prison itself, she was overcome with the