Rock Island Line. David Rhodes
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have known they couldn’t be given anything, not even a sack of corn. We did give them some bread, but it wasn’t anything, not for what they did.”
Wilson’s fishing buddies, Sam and Dave, died, and Wilson waited a long time before he began going again, alone. Della continued to teach school, and in 1935 began being paid enough so that she and Wilson could live on the salary and save the rest of the money from the store, what little there was. Wilson’s health wasn’t good, and though his spirit remained unruffled, still he slept more, became weaker and lived under the continual din of a bad heart, which Della told John (who watched after them like a mother hen) sounded like it was trying to peck its way outside his chest.
Sharon Center eased out of the Depression. Loans became available. Everyone invested in freezers full of food and put them in their basements, which seemed better insurance than any other kind that they would never be caught wanting again. John had one put in his parents’ house. People wished that the store would be reopened, and eventually, in ‘39, Sehr rented it out to some owl from Iowa City, who set it up more to sell ice cream than staples, and in the middle of winter disappeared completely, leaving the building locked and the shelves full. Men who worked for banks came in the spring and opened it up. Rats had eaten into the corners of the boxes, and the smell was unbearable. Sehr accepted no responsibility, because, as he said, the rent had been paid for an entire year. The windows of the store part were boarded up in house siding, and a family named Collins moved into it. They never mingled with anyone, and for the ten years they lived there were looked upon with suspicion.
John was now nearly forty, and up until the day he drove away, locking his garage and house, it was not remembered that he had ever left for more than several days in the entire eighteen or twenty years since he had come back from Detroit. He climbed into his car and drove away, heading west; and from that direction he could have been going anywhere. It was late spring, and clear into summer the garage doors remained closed, and there was wonder concerning where he had gone, and what might have been in his mind to go there, and what might have happened to him. He stayed away until the middle of July, when at night Hercules spun directly overhead and the edge of his mace touched the Milky Way’s southern stream. Then all that had been forgotten about John was remembered. He came back married.
Her name was Sarah. John never said what her last name had been, or where he had found her, or what he had said when he first met her, how he had come to . . . anything. This frightening lack of information (it was regretfully acknowledged) was due to no one being on intimate terms with him—no one who could learn the details in confidence and spread them around. They thought she must be from the south, though no one had been any farther down than Missouri except Jack Sanders, and he thought she came from somewhere around Duluth, Minnesota, where his brother had worked with a road crew and had said there were women there that affected you like that.
Sarah was of normal height for a woman, and weighed in the area marked healthy in the penny-operated weight machines. Her hair was ordinary brown and not carefully kept, sprawling out in places. The dress she wore that first day in Sharon, walking around the yard and over to the garage and into the house and back again with laundry, was of coarse green cotton, covering even her arms down to the elbow. But none of these things were noticed.
Six or seven men were at the garage that first day when she came and talked to John about where the clothespins were. From twenty feet away they could smell her skin. Every movement from under the green dress sent warm, pulsing sensations down their spines. The soft muscles in her neck screamed to be touched. Her hands seemed obviously designed for caressing, and to look at the delicate inside of her forearms made them all blush. Noticing her ankles, they thought, My God, they’re naked! as though the usual practice of women in July was to go about bound in mummy cloth. Her face, tanned by some foreign sun, glowed red in the cheeks. She talked to John and they understood only one or two words per sentence—because of that quality of half laughing and half sighing that danced through her voice. The faint outline of her naked body beneath the dress, the swell of her breasts and the roundness of her hips, made them continually swallow and rub their faces. Mike Calbraith said later, “I tell you, I couldn’t move. My eyes watered. I couldn’t hear. It was all I could do to keep from trying to touch her. My pecker was standing straight out like an iron poker, and she turned to leave and looked at us all and walked by. It was more than anyone could do not to watch, and, oh man, watching her walk! You could smell her, honest to God. She’s the real thing if you ever wanted to see it. A few years ago I think I’d a done anything for something like that. I’d a murdered for it.”
When John introduced her and her voice sang out, “How do you do?” no one could say anything. Harold M. made gurgling noises. Remington Hodge smiled. The art of using words to talk with didn’t return until several minutes after she had crossed the street, entered the house and closed the door on herself. Naturally, one of the main questions in their minds was what John had ever said to her at first. What could anyone think of to say? Where did he find her? When you knew her as well as he must . . . wasn’t it more than you could stand? Did the fear go away? All these questions loomed around them, and they composed themselves and looked over to John, in hopes of finding some of the answers. But he blushed in his usual way and hid himself in his work.
“You have a real pretty wife,” said Brenneman. “I imagine she cooks well enough.”
“I guess so,” mumbled John, intent on loosening a nut.
Anything else was too hard to ask, and would have been futile anyway, because he had never been one to offer much of himself in the conversation. It was remembered then about his capacities.
A delegation formed and in three carloads went out to Della and Wilson’s in order to make sure they knew. They drove in, unloaded and knocked on the door. Wilson came out and looked at them bewilderedly.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello,” said Marion. “We just thought we’d stop over.”
“All of you?”
“Oh. Well, I guess there is some number,” he said, looking behind him. “But just a social call. How have you been?”
“Della!” Wilson called. “Della, come here!”
Della came out and rescued him, and let him wander off by himself back in the trees beyond the barn. It was becoming so that no one ever saw him, except on Sunday at church. When he did speak, it couldn’t be depended on to make much sense. Della said sometimes he was like a child and had to be watched, because he was always leaving the refrigerator door open, and would get lost when he went fishing. Sometimes in his periods of obstinacy or when he would start throwing things she had to threaten to spank him in order to get him out of the rain or to go to bed. The doctor said it was arteries and the oxygen in his blood. Wilson said it was nothing and that he was the same as he’d ever been—as well as he could remember. But some things, he admitted, were easier to remember than others.
“Come in,” said Della.
“No, no. We can’t stay. We just dropped by to say hello. We were going for a ride and decided to pull in.”
“Gracious me!”
“John’s home,” said Clara Hocksteader.
“I know. He came out last night. His sister will be glad to hear he’s back. She’s such a worrier. I must remember to write her a letter.”
“Then you’ve seen her!”
“Who?”
“His wife—what’s her name?”
“Sarah. No, we haven’t seen her. She was busy with something at home. But they’re both coming out tonight.”
“Were you surprised that he got married after all these years?” asked J. Yoder.
“Well, yes and no. I’m glad he is, though. I’d always thought he would be so lonely by himself. Have you met her?”
“ Yes.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside? . . . Or, I know, I’ll get some chairs and bring