Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [15]
“Why, I didn’t mean to,” says Mack, pretending innocence.
“She’s gone. Furthermore, she’s grown and she can go out in the middle of the night if she wants to. She can go to South America if she wants to.”
Mary Lou puts the cover on the cake stand and runs water in the sink over the cake plates. Before she can say more, Mack has lifted the telephone and is dialing the time-and-temperature number again. He listens, while his mouth drops open, as if in disbelief.
“The temperature’s going down a degree every hour,” he says in a whisper. “It’s down to twenty-one.”
Mary Lou suddenly realizes that Mack calls the temperature number because he is afraid to talk on the telephone, and by listening to a recording, he doesn’t have to reply. It’s his way of pretending that he’s involved. He wants it to snow so he won’t have to go outside. He is afraid of what might happen. But it occurs to her that what he must really be afraid of is women. Then Mary Lou feels so sick and heavy with her power over him that she wants to cry. She sees the way her husband is standing there, in a frozen pose. Mack looks as though he could stand there all night with the telephone receiver against his ear.
DETROIT SKYLINE, 1949
When I was nine, my mother took me on a long journey up North, because she wanted me to have a chance to see the tall buildings of Detroit. We lived on a farm in western Kentucky, not far from the U.S. highway that took so many Southerners northward to work in the auto industry just after World War II. We went to visit Aunt Mozelle, Mama’s sister, and Uncle Boone Cashon, who had headed north soon after Boone’s discharge from the service. They lived in a suburb of Detroit, and my mother had visited them once before. She couldn’t get the skyscrapers she had seen out of her mind.
The Brooks bus took all day and all night to get there. On our trip, my mother threw up and a black baby cried all the way. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about Detroit. Mama had tried in vain to show me how high the buildings were, pointing at the straight horizon beyond the cornfields. I had the impression that they towered halfway to the moon.
“Don’t let the Polacks get you,” my father had warned when we left. He had to stay home to milk the cows. My two-year-old brother, Johnny, stayed behind with him.
My aunt and uncle met us in a taxi at the bus station, and before I got a good look at them, they had engulfed me in their arms.
“I wouldn’t have knowed you, Peggy Jo,” my uncle said. “You was just a little squirt the last time I saw you.”
“Don’t this beat all?” said Aunt Mozelle. “Boone here could have built us a car by now—and us coming in a taxi.”
“We’ve still got that old plug, but it gets us to town,” said Mama.
“How could I build a car?” said Uncle Boone. “All I know is bumpers.”
“That’s what he does,” my aunt said to me. “He puts on bumpers.”
“We’ll get a car someday soon,” Uncle Boone said to his wife.
My uncle was a thin, delicate man with a receding hairline. His speckled skin made me think of the fragile shells of sparrow eggs. My aunt, on the other hand, was stout and tanned, with thick, dark hair draped like wings over her ears. I gazed at my aunt and uncle, trying to match them with the photograph my mother had shown me.
“Peggy’s all worked up over seeing the tall buildings,” said Mama as we climbed into the taxi. “The cat’s got her tongue.”
“It has not!”
“I’m afraid we’ve got bad news,” said Aunt Mozelle. “The city buses is on strike and there’s no way to get into Detroit.”
“Don’t say it!” cried Mama. “After we come all this way.”
“It’s trouble with the unions,” said Boone. “But they might start up before y’all go back.” He patted my knee and said, “Don’t worry, littlun.”
“The unions is full of reds,” Aunt Mozelle whispered to my mother.
“Would it be safe to go?” Mama asked.
“We needn’t worry,” said Aunt Mozelle.
From the window of the squat yellow taxi, driven by a froglike man