A Woman Named Drown - Padgett Powell by Padgett Powell Read Free Book Online Page A

not your place run at that time
by--
    DEFENSE: This line of questioning is irrelevant.
    COURT: Can the prosecution prove this questioning
related to the specific charges?
    PROSECUTOR: We can.
    And so Carlisle, otherwise uneducated and ill
equipped, had run the Drown place for five months. (The name Drown is
the character's real name, and the playwright seems to have been
either ignorant of or delighted by this heavy-handedness.) Apparently
his overseerage was competent, for a large crop of high-quality
tobacco was harvested, and Carlisle, in his pride, was seen in town
smoking self-rolled cigars so large he was dubbed Havana Carlisle.
Retrospectively, it was argued that the cigar-parading was evidence
that he knew of his mistress's birthing business in St. Louis.
    Drown beat the rap, but Mary Constance Baker had more
trouble with it. She was convinced that a part of the audience--the
mall ladies who recognized her, for instance--believed she slept with
blacks. Thus I have come to do the banking and the marketing, as she
calls it.
    I got back from shopping and it occurred to me for no
reason that we had taken another invisible step toward our undeclared
trip to Florida, where I swear we are somehow bound to go, whether
vexed by Hoop to do so or not. I've had my drunk-driving skills
checked, can count money, and now have demonstrated some kind of
real-world dexterity in fetching three bags of groceries five
blocks-these are the talents of secular dependability required of a
companion on the road, it would seem, at least in my imagined
itinerary of our imagined traveling together.
      We had a steak on the garden patio last night
and we got on the oilcloth-covered chaise together, Mary sitting in
my arms, and upon a casual remark of mine about the flowers, she
said, "It's too cold for them in winter here." In my no-bio
disadvantage, a remark like that indeed suggests Florida, and I think
I suggest Stump, whose clothes fit me to a t, and I think, all
together, we're in small maneuvers for leaving for Florida, but
there'll be no song and dance about that either.
    " Thought I'd go see an old friend tomorrow, if
you'd like to go," Mary said.
    The idea of being alone in her house seemed radical.
"Sure."
    " They're a gas. Hazel and Bruce."
    " Okay."
    She turned around, and up and kissed me so suddenly
she reminded me of a girl nervous about sex and deciding to get the
butterflies over with. I felt young, too: Stump's Ban-Lons give me a
strange feeling on the skin, not unlike I'm wearing ladies' nylon
hose. The garden was close and green and dark, and a sprinkler was
spicking somewhere, casting a mist on us. Mary's skin has a
half-size-too-large feel, giving it a satin effect, a softer touch
than a younger woman. It is hard to imagine we want to leave at all.
It is a halcyon, unjudged time: billiards crack, drinks fizzle,
colors pour into the house from dazzling flowers every morning
watered, making it a cozy, gauzy life, as if we were candied fruits
sweetening in a snifter of brandy.

         H oop
and Virginia were practice, it turns out, for Hazel and Bruce. Mary
put a half gallon of gin in the car and handed me the keys. On the
drive, out into an old suburb development, she said, "Sugar,
these people are somewhat rough-cut."
    " What's rough?"
    " Hazel is a doll, for my money, but you might be
startled." I resolved not to be.
    We found a low, cinder-block, brown house with rotted
turquoise eaves and a rusted-out screen porch. A woman I presumed
Hazel swung open the screenless door to the porch and bent over a
bit, squinting through black cat-eye glasses before rushing Mary,
chortling and pumping elbows. Their embrace was a confused
arrangement and an ongoing adjustment of Hazel's cigarette and Old
Milwaukee and slipping eye-glasses, and Mary's gin and cut flowers
and Honeyhowlonghasitbeens and honeyhowgoodyoulooks. When introduced,
Hazel looked at me and then said to Mary, "I see what you mean.
You lucky dog. If I was twenty years