Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [75]
“We’ll be real quiet,” says Holly.
“Far be it from me to disturb the dead,” Waldeen says, wondering why she is speaking in a mocking tone.
After supper, Joe plays rummy with Holly while Waldeen cracks pecans for a cake. Pecan shells fly across the floor, and the cat pounces on them. Holly and Joe are laughing together, whooping loudly over the cards. They sound like contestants on Let’s Make a Deal. Joe Murdock had wanted desperately to be on a game show and strike it rich. He wanted to go to California so he would have a chance to be on TV and so he could travel the freeways. He drove in the stock car races, and he had been drag racing since he learned to drive. Evel Knievel was his hero. Waldeen couldn’t look when the TV showed Evel Knievel leaping over canyons. She told Joe many times, “He’s nothing but a show-off. But if you want to break your fool neck, then go right ahead. Nobody’s stopping you.” She is better off without Joe Murdock. If he were still in town, he would do something to make her look foolish, such as paint her name on his car door. He once had WALDEEN painted in large red letters on the door of his LTD. It was like a tattoo. It is probably a good thing he is in Arizona. Still, she cannot really understand why he had to move so far away from home.
After Holly goes upstairs, carrying the cat, whose name is Mr. Spock, Waldeen says to Joe, “In China they have a law that the men have to help keep house.” She is washing the dishes.
Joe grins. “That’s in China. This is here.”
Waldeen slaps at him with the dish towel, and Joe jumps up and grabs her. “I’ll do all the housework if you marry me,” he says. “You can get the Chinese to arrest me if I don’t.”
“You sound just like my ex-husband. Full of promises.”
“Guys named Joe are good at making promises.” Joe laughs and hugs her.
“All the important men in my life were named Joe,” says Waldeen, with pretended seriousness. “My first real boyfriend was named Joe. I was fourteen.”
“You always bring that up,” says Joe. “I wish you’d forget about them. You love me, don’t you?”
“Of course, you idiot.”
“Then why don’t you marry me?”
“I just said I was going to think twice is all.”
“But if you love me, what are you waiting for?”
“That’s the easy part. Love is easy.”
—
In the middle of The Waltons, C. W. Redmon and Betty Mathis drop by. Betty, Waldeen’s best friend, lives with C. W., who works with Joe on a construction crew. Waldeen turns off the TV and clears magazines from the couch. C. W. and Betty have just returned from Florida and they are full of news about Sea World. Betty shows Waldeen her new tote bag with a killer whale pictured on it.
“Guess who we saw at the Louisville airport,” Betty says.
“I give up,” says Waldeen.
“Colonel Sanders!”
“He’s eighty-four if he’s a day,” C. W. adds.
“You couldn’t miss him in that white suit,” Betty says. “I’m sure it was him. Oh, Joe! He had a walking stick. He went strutting along—”
“No kidding!”
“He probably beats chickens to death with it,” says Holly, who is standing around.
“That would be something to have,” says Joe. “Wow, one of the Colonel’s walking sticks.”
“Do you know what I read in a magazine?” says Betty. “That the Colonel Sanders outfit is trying to grow a three-legged chicken.”
“No, a four-legged chicken,” says C. W.
“Well, whatever.”
Waldeen is startled by the conversation. She is rattling ice cubes, looking for glasses. She finds an opened Coke in the refrigerator, but it may have lost its fizz. Before she can decide whether to open the new one Joe brought, C. W. and Betty grab glasses of ice from her and hold them out. Waldeen pours the Coke. There is a little fizz.
“We went first class the whole way,” says C. W. “I always say, what’s a vacation for if you don’t splurge?”
“We spent a fortune,” says Betty. “Plus, I gained a ton.”
“Man, those big jets are really nice,” says C. W.
C. W. and Betty seem changed, exactly like all the people Waldeen has known who come back from Florida with tales of adventure and glowing