The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker [88]
Then one day he turned up with a sack of croaker he caught. First time since she’d known him he ever came to the front door. She hardly knew how to act. Her jaw muscles ached from smiling. They stood there for a long time without saying anything, Woodrow looking over her shoulder at what she finally figured out was the portrait of Theo. Before he left he allowed as how they favored some. She never did know what to make of that, though afterward she took to trying even harder never to look above the hearth.
The Tape Recorders came not long after Sarah’s death, having read about it in the paper. They were all hot to talk about the New Dynamic. Maggie said to Whaley, “Don’t go talking to them about all that. Have some dignity.”
“You’re going to lecture me about dignity?”
“Go ahead and throw it in my face if you want, every bad thing I ever done. But look: I’m not about to go telling them things that Woodrow wouldn’t want them to know.”
“How do you know what Woodrow wants anybody to know or don’t?”
“I know he wouldn’t appreciate it, you talking about Sarah to them. He’s a private man. And listen: there’s only three of us now. Ain’t no black and white left as far as I’m concerned. We might be kin, but he’s as much a part of the family as we are, you ask me. If he wants to talk about his wife dying in the storm, let him talk about it. But if he doesn’t bring it up, that doesn’t give you the right to tell it.”
“You act like I’m going around gossiping. What these people are doing is important, Maggie. Without them the history of this island would be lost. No one else is going to tell it. And if we don’t tell it the way it happened, they’ll just make it up to suit them.”
“So you’re going to tell it the way it happened?”
Whaley reminded herself that her resolve was this island. Without it, even Woodrow would have given up long ago, followed Sarah to the mainland. All she had to do was act right.
Still, it was a victory for Maggie, for the Tape Recorders did ask, and she told them she’d rather not talk about Sarah’s death, it was too soon, too raw still, and even Dr. Levinson, who had a way of needling you until you told him things you didn’t even know you knew, left off then.
Slowly Woodrow came back to them. Nights when the breeze kept the mosquitoes away and some when it didn’t they’d sit together on the steps of the church. Whaley would read out her prices from the paper and they would discuss the ways the world had gotten away with them.
One night they were out on the steps. It was early spring and so clear the stars popped out before the sun went down. They’d had an early supper, had met up at the church; Whaley had a fat stack of prices to get through. Some of them were fixed to items she had no iota what they were talking about. A Weed Eater? A microwave?
That night, Woodrow had a letter from Crawl. Maggie read it aloud for him. Crawl claimed Woodrow was about to turn eighty. Whaley knew Woodrow was older than her but she did not figure him for eighty.
When Maggie finished reading the letter, Woodrow said, “Crawl don’t know nothing about how old I am.”
Maggie said, “Old enough to know better.”
Whaley said, “Too old to change.”
She wasn’t exactly joking, but she did not mean for him to take it so seriously. She saw immediately that what she’d said hurt him, for he made like a bug had bit his neck and slapped himself so hard she started. For the life of her she could not figure what got away with him so bad. They were all three too old to change, and what of it? What was the point in changing your life when it was nearly over and done with?
But Woodrow took it wrong. He sat there stewing. She could feel it coming off of him, a fog of resentment, even before he came out with it.
“Y’all ought not to have done me like y’all done me,” he said before he got up and picked his way down the stairs and headed down the lane home.
Well, he just didn’t understand her, that’s all. It wasn’t like she was criticizing him. The opposite: his ability to roll along with whatever the wind blew