With a Hammer for My Heart: A Novel

GARLAND

GARLAND: Mad old woman goes off and leaves me with this box. I watch her, then turn and steady myself, putting my hand on the heater. Hot as God's tongue. Blisters my hand so, I can hardly hold the box or a bottle. Never had a woman cross my doorsill but brought bad luck. Nora: hardest-hearted, softest-bodied woman I ever run into. Didn't care for me once she had them younguns. Picked my pockets clean. Chloe: the biggest gift God give her was a ticket to her own funeral. Face like a heart. Man drives up, breaks it with a shotgun. The rest of her still smooth as a snake. My own girls, Ardith and Nancy Catherine, dancing and singing: now why? Their mommy scared, their daddy no account. They'd go on making songs for their clothespin dolls. I hit my girls. I had to. World's too hard. And then Lawanda. Hikes up here, Miss Priss, with a hammer for my heart. I don't care a whit about her. Don't ever want to see her fuzzy blond face again. She's smart, Lawanda is. She's tough. But she shouldn't never have climbed this hill. If she was mine, I wouldn't allow it. And sending her mamaw—big old slap-jawed woman! No, Lawanda didn't do that. She must have told her mamaw, 63 WITH A HAMMER FOR MY HEART though. Knowing Chloe. Mamaw's big hands on Chloe's flesh. Footlocker. Coffin. Bus. Give me a jailhouse. Send me somewhere, you officers of the law! Am I going to rot up here? Are you leaving me to do my worst? I got their faces. I don't need them on these pictures. They're burnt into me is what it is. I see them every time I close my eyes. Used to see them in the bottom of a glass. Now I just drink out of the bottle. Okay. I ain't so pitiful. They's worse than me. I could go to town if I took a mind to. I got better pants than this. I could go see Curtis Ballard. Where's he got to, anyway? And if Howard Ingle was there . . . I don't want to think about Howard Ingle. Nor his daughter . Nor his Bible-mouthed mother-in-law. God's plumb line! I reckon it drops straight down to Hell. And everything in between's so crooked, it makes that plumb line look like a guy wire. Yep. A guy wire for Satan's telephone pole. Call me up, Old Scratch, you hot number. We'll fry the bird feet. We'll burn the whole box here— Nora's whelps and Mamaw's breast feather. But hold off till this evening. Right now, I got to go to town. • • • That Mamaw's done sprung me from my bus without a bite to eat. Aw, hell, my digestion's mint anyway. Belly burns and every mouthful I send down is just fuel for the fire. Coffee and whiskey, I can tolerate—that's about it. And a real hard apple. Most other stuff, you can have. And me with a garden big enough to feed the five thousand. Nothing left now but broccoli and collards. I done decapitated my cabbage the first of last week. Rolled their little heads into a hole I dug. No cellar in a bus. 64 GARLAND I ought to take Curtis Ballard some of them cabbages. Make him a mean slaw. Sit down with that and some beans, a pone of bread . . . well, Curtis has got people to sit down with. Me, I don't want nobody. So FU tell him to come on up to the place and get him a head or two. Why should I have to haul the things to town? Pm no peddler. A good thing, too. I couldn't sell water to a man whose house was afire. Lawanda, now, she sold me them magazines. One music, one science. You'd think they'd be real different. Nah, they're both full of numbers. Gives me the headache. Where'd they put that town anyway? Thing is, I started out the long way, I think. Yeah, I did. Didn't want to crash into them Ingles. No sir. That Mamaw's a Mack truck. Fact is, I don't want to...