Chapter 17 #2
“Alright then, why don’t you go out there and sweep them, because I can’t do everything—” Mistake. Frances shot into a C-sharp on me.
“We are in an emergency. I don’t even know where my husband is, and now you want some stranger coming around because Birdie’s poor bleeding heart—”
“I don’t want to hear it!” I snapped. Truth was, I wasn’t sure about the woman out there with the criminal record either, but it burned me up that Frances couldn’t even share a plate of food because her teeny-tiny heart didn’t allow it yet she kissed the ass of people like Garnett Pittman.
“I stayed here to help you despite having problems of my own, and I’ve been cooking and cleaning, which I don’t mind doing, but if I can do that for you, you can do this for somebody else who also needs a hand! ”
“What in the devil?” Mrs. Tartt came in. “Is the house on fire?”
“Birdie invited a hobo to lunch.”
“Franny! She is a friend of mine and she has a name—”
“Acquaintance. And she’s sitting on our back porch.”
“She’s a—who?” Mrs. Tartt’s eyes moved to the window.
“Her name’s Charlie and she’s somebody I know from …
out of town and she’s offered to tidy up the porches and help out a little—not for money—and I honestly think we—I could use the help around here.
” Charlie unfortunately had stood up, and in profile, we could all see the spattered yellow dress now.
“Mrs. Tartt, she’s going through a hard time right now,” I said. “Same as we are and I’d like to help her any little way we can.”
“Well … she does look a little down-at-the-heels, dear,” Mrs. Tartt said and touched the gold locket she always wore. “But I suppose if she’s a friend of yours … I don’t see any harm in it, you, Frances?”
Frances rolled her eyes.
“Thank you. I also told her that maybe she could stay a night … if you didn’t mind?”
Mrs. Tartt’s mouth made a little o. “You mean stay here?”
Frances’s jaw had slowly dropped and it stayed down.
“Just a night or two,” I said. “She could sleep down here in the maid’s room.” I elbowed to the little bedsit off the kitchen. Even if I didn’t exactly trust Charlie, it wouldn’t help my story to put a “friend” in the barn.
“You want to put her in our house?” Frances said, making a face. “She looks indigent. Her dress is all … splattered with something.” It did look worse from the side, crooked and sheer in places from scrubbing. “What if she robs us blind?”
I stared at her. “What’s she gonna steal, Franny, the floorboards?”
“You’re sure Pic and Polly won’t think we’d brought somebody else in to help out?” Mrs. Tartt said. “It’d break my heart if they thought that. We haven’t even paid them what we owe them.”
“We won’t tell anybody,” I said, which was a good idea anyway. “It’d only be for a couple of days, and I could use some help.” I added, “And it’s the kind thing to do.”
Mrs. Tartt nodded, very slightly, at this. “You really do have a kind heart, don’t you, Birdie?”
“So do you,” I said.
“If she’s a friend of yours, then I’m alright with it,” Mrs. Tartt said. “Frances, I’m sure you are too.”
The maid’s room was off the back of the kitchen, to the right, across from the washroom.
Small and dim, it was papered with faded blue flowers.
There was a single bed with a white coverlet, one window, a dressing table and stool, and an ancient rickety rocking chair with a heart cut out of the back.
I called Charlie inside and showed her the room.
“I know it’s not much, but it beats the barn,” I said. I’d get claustrophobic with that sloped ceiling over the bed. It smelled a little stale, forgotten. I’d never seen Picador or Polly so much as sit down in here, only pass through to the water closet.
Charlie looked around the room and the bathroom, a hand to her chest when she saw herself in the cloudy mirror over the sink, gaunt cheekbones, windblown hair. “There’s a bathtub?” she said.
“It’s probably just a cold-water tap,” I said.
“No, no, this is more than fine. Thank you, Birdie,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Get settled and …” How to handle this?
Not only was the timing terrible, there was more to it than that.
“Listen, don’t mention to anybody here that you’re Meg’s mother or anything about Garnett.
Frances is … a big fan. So maybe just stay in here and rest until I get back to introduce everybody.
I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go to town to deal with something. ”
The wind had completely stopped, leaving behind humidity so thick it felt solid. It was a hundred degrees out, the kind of heat that killed folks, but I walked on. I had a list of errands to run in town that couldn’t wait for better weather.
“I’d like to send a tenner to the Port Gibson office, please?
” I said, face dripping, at the Western Union counter.
A tenner was a ten-word telegram that cost a dime, that a man would drive the thirty-two miles from Port Gibson to the Foote to deliver.
Economically it didn’t make sense, but if you wanted to send a telegram back to Oxford, you’d have to tote it yourself or call Port Gibson, which I knew old Mr. Parkins wouldn’t do.
He’d write a letter, which was cheaper and slower, which is all to say that I wouldn’t know Mr. Parkins’s reaction for at least three days.
But the real beauty of a tenner was you simply couldn’t say much, and even if you wrote I intend to kill so-and-so, the clerk wasn’t allowed to ask about it.
“It’s to a Mr. Parkins at Footely Farm then he smiled. Why was he smiling like that? This was not a smiling matter. “Buffaloe’s for lunch tomorrow?”
I guess that meant he wasn’t available now. “Noonish?” I asked.
“Should I come pick you up, or …”