Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [51]
“I lost part of the pattern,” Tammy says. “And I have to cut the facings out by guess. Do you cut them on the bias?”
“I don’t know what weskit you’re talking about.”
“You made me one with rickrack once, remember?”
“There’s this guy up a tree and he’s all the way to the top—that tulip tree? Glenn’s got some men out here and they’re cutting the tree down. I can’t think straight.”
“Which tree? I don’t know trees by name.”
“The one at the corner of the house.”
“Oh. Well, I’ll let you go if you’re busy. I wanted to get this thing together before Jimmy comes in for dinner.”
“Cut it on the bias,” says Dolores impulsively. Her daughter calls her every day, to ask something obvious.
After hanging up, Dolores pours herself some coffee. She looks in the refrigerator at a chicken carcass and half a meat loaf. It occurs to her that Boyce and Glenn might like some cake and iced tea later, but she does not have time to bake a cake before her appointment. She does not know what kind to make anyway. She puts in a load of wash, but she doesn’t have enough dirty clothes for a full load, so she sets the water level at low. She straightened up the house earlier, as if preparing for company. Now there is nothing to do. Her mother always said worriers made the best housekeepers. The Oak Ridge Boys are singing “Elvira” on the radio. The Oak Ridge Boys used to be a gospel quartet when Dolores was a child. Now, inexplicably, they are a group of young men with blow-dried hair, singing country-rock songs about love.
From the porch steps, she watches the climber saw off a branch. It gets caught in some leaves as it falls, and the men steer the branch down with the rope. Glenn dashes around the yard, pulling at one end of the rope. High in the tree, the climber is hanging in his leather sling.
“He don’t even use spikes,” says Petey. “Gah!”
When the branch reaches the ground, Glenn unties it and tosses it in the driveway near the truck.
Dolores watches the men work until the tip of the trunk is denuded. It sways slightly, like a sailboat ready to come about. The climber steadies himself, adjusts his straps, then swings his right leg over a limb and straddles it.
“He’s going to dehorn that thing,” says Boyce.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” says Dolores.
She telephones Dusty.
“Aren’t you scared?” Dusty asks when Dolores describes what is going on. “Why don’t you come over here where it’s safe?”
“It’s not like you think. This guy’s slicing it off, a piece at a time.” Dolores hears the chain saw pause, then the swish of branches, the shouts of the men. “He looks like a hippie,” she says.
“You don’t see many of them anymore.”
“He chews tobacco too.”
“Is he cute?”
“Not bad. You should come over here.”
“I don’t know if I could kiss somebody that chewed tobacco.” Dusty laughs. “Did I tell you what that high-tone husband of mine says to me?”
“No, what?”
“He said he’ll take me back—on condition.”
“What?”
“If I quit beauty school.”
“You don’t want to do that.”
“He thinks he’s got it over me,” Dusty says. “He thinks I’m bound to come crawling back to him because I was so bad.”
Dusty’s marriage broke up over a college student Dusty ran around with for a while. Dusty, who was fifteen years older than the boy, thought there was no age problem until he graduated and hitchhiked to California with a backpack.
Dolores says, “Well, wish me luck. I see the doctor at eleven.”
“Girl, I don’t envy you.”
“I can’t eat a thing.”
“You better eat.”
“I ate half a Breakfast Bar.”
“I want you to call me the minute you get back.”
“I will.”
“I’m glad you’re going through with it,” Dusty says. “That specialist is new at the clinic, and this town has needed somebody like that for the longest time.”
Dolores hears the chain saw start and stop. She hears a tree trunk breaking. She says, her voice tightening, “If I die, I want you to look in on Glenn. He won’t be able to take care of himself. He’ll be so helpless and—”
“I’m not listening,” says Dusty. “I won’t let you talk like that.”
—
The work has been