Chapter 7 #2
Ardoin looked up.
"How do we know she's not laying it left already," he said.
I was out of my chair. I don't remember the getting up.
Preacher's hand came down flat on the table, once, and that was all it took, because it always is.
"Sit down."
"He—"
"Jonah. Sit down."
I sat down.
"Ardoin," Preacher said. "You've asked a fair question in the worst possible way, which is a talent, and I'd like you to think about who taught it to you."
"Preacher—"
"I'm going to answer it and then we'll never say it again in this room.
" He put both hands flat. "The Thibodeaux family has laid that line four times in a hundred years.
Every one of those women died early and none of them got paid and not one of them got thanked.
Wrenlee's great-grandmother went out in 1931 in February and came back without three fingers, and this club at the time voted — voted — that it wasn't a club matter. "
Nobody moved.
"We've been letting these women do it alone for ninety years," Preacher said, "and calling it their business, because it was cheaper. So no. I don't need to know she's not laying it left. I need to know why we've never once been out there with her."
Beauchamp, at the far end, said quietly, "I still vote no."
"Noted."
"I'm not being ugly about it. I've got kids in that church."
"That's the best reason there is," Preacher said. "It's noted, and it's on the record, and it stands."
Before the vote, Wrenlee spoke.
She hadn't planned to. I know because she told me after that she'd promised herself she wouldn't, and she got about eleven minutes into that promise.
"Can I say one thing?"
Preacher: "It's your line."
"It's not my line." She came off the door. "That's the thing I've been standing here trying to work out how to say, and Ardoin's actually helped me, so — thank you, I suppose, in the ugliest possible way."
Ardoin went red.
"It's not my line, it's not my family's line, it's yours," she said.
"It's the town's. My great-grandmother laid it because somebody had to and everybody agreed she was the one, and then everybody went home.
And every woman since has been out there in the dark holding a door for eleven hundred people who think of it as a family eccentricity, like collecting plates. "
Nobody moved.
"So vote," she said. "But understand what you're voting on.
You're not voting on whether to trust me.
You're voting on whether it's yours. And if you decide it isn't, that's fine, and I'll go lay it anyway, because that's what we do, and in forty years another woman with my face will stand in this room and give this same speech and y'all will still be surprised. "
Bear said, quietly, "It's ours."
"Say it louder," said Preacher.
"It's ours," said Bear.
Two no votes. Ardoin and Beauchamp. Both of them sat there and took it and neither of them looked at me on the way out, and I watched them go and thought about how in nineteen years I have never had to wonder about a man's back in this club.
I wondered about two of them that night.
Roach caught me in the hall after.
"Don't."
"I'm not going to do anything."
"You've got a face on."
"I've got a face, Roach, that's the only equipment I came with."
"Jonah." He put a hand flat on my chest, which nobody in this club does, and which is how I knew he meant it. "Two men voted their conscience in a room where it cost them something. That's the system working. If you go put a hand on Ardoin tonight you'll be proving every single thing he said."
"He said she might be laying it left."
"He did."
"In front of her."
"He did that too, and it was ugly, and Preacher took the top of his head off for it, and it's over." Roach let go. "You know what worries me more than Ardoin?"
"What."
"Beauchamp." He glanced back at the door. "Ardoin said an ugly thing out loud in a room, and men who do that generally aren't the problem. Beauchamp said a quiet reasonable thing and then sat there for twenty minutes looking at his hands."
"He's got kids."
"He's got kids," Roach agreed. "So does half that table, and they voted the other way."
She told me in the lot at half past midnight.
"I'm laying it right."
I didn't say anything.
"Say something."
"I'm not going to say anything," I said, "because there's nothing I can say that isn't me putting my thumb on it, and this one's yours."
"That's a coward's answer."
"Yes."
She laughed, wetly, once. Then she stopped.
"Two miles," she said. "Take up the half at five and lay it right and close it clean, and my mother stays where she is."
"For how long."
"Forever's the honest word."
The clubhouse lights were still on behind us. Somebody was arguing about a card game.
"I need to ask you for something," she said, "and it's not fair, and I'm going to ask anyway, because I've spent seven years not asking and it cost more than asking would have."
"Ask."
"When I do it—" Her voice went. She got it back. "When I go out there Saturday and lay the last two miles knowing what it does to her, I'm not going to be able to stand up at the end of it, Jonah. I know myself. I'll get to the last hundred feet and my legs are going to go."
"Wrenlee."
"So I need you to hold me up." She looked at me, forty years old, hands wrecked, absolutely done. "That's it. That's the whole ask. I'll do the laying. I just need somebody behind me so I don't have to be the one keeping me upright."
I put my hand out.
"That's it? That's the whole ask?"
"That's the whole ask."
"Wrenlee, you understand I'd have done that seven years ago. On a Tuesday. For a grocery run."
"I know."
"You could have had it the entire time."
"Jonah, I know," she said. "That's the thing I'll be carrying. You don't have to hand it to me."
"I'm not handing it to you. I'm agreeing to it."
She looked at my hand for a second like she'd never seen a hand.
Then she took it.