Look for Light in the Vegetable Patch
Lorene Gauss maneuvered her white Cadillac through town and out onto a country road. She was sweating, her throat felt dry, her tongue was thick in her mouth. These little excursions delivering food baskets to the poor made her prickly and nervous, but it was something she believed she had to do. She couldn’t be the only member of her ladies’ club who didn’t deliver baskets. She wouldn’t have anything to talk about at the meetings when the other women were amusing the members with their experiences. And, besides, she was the treasurer. The treasurer couldn’t just sit out an important charity initiative.
She brought her daughter, Patsy Ruth, along on this trip. Patsy Ruth wasn’t much good with visits to the poor, but it was some small consolation to have somebody in the car with her, especially when she was going to a place she had never been to and wasn’t certain how to get there. Nevertheless, Lorene felt a certain amount of resentment toward the other ladies regarding this particular assignment. Some of them lived closer, and they all knew very well she didn’t like going that far from town.
Patsy Ruth stared straight ahead, gripping the armrest. At fifteen, she was beginning to look like her father: receding chin, piggish pink skin, unruly red hair. She would have done better to look like her mother, but we never have any say in these matters.
“I think you missed a turn,” Patsy Ruth said.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” Lorene asked with irritation. She looked in the rearview mirror to make sure no cars were coming, slowed and executed a U-turn in the middle of the highway.
“Turn on that dirt road where that old fence is,” Patsy Ruth said.
“Whoever heard of not having signs to mark the streets?” Lorene said, ignoring the simple fact that she was in the country and there weren’t any streets, only roads and turn-offs.
Lorene followed the winding road for a mile or so until she came to a weather-beaten, two-story house with a sagging front porch on a rise overlooking the road.
“This has to be it,” she said. “It’s the only house for miles.” She stopped the car and started to get out.
“I’ll wait in the car,” Patsy Ruth said.
“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” When Lorene was getting the food basket out of the trunk, a little brown dog spotted her from the porch, gave two sharp barks and then ran toward her, wagging its tail. It nudged her ankle with its nose.
“I think it likes you, Mother,” Patsy Ruth observed.
“Get away!” Lorene said. “Oh, I hope it doesn’t have fleas!”
When the dog attempted to jump on her with its front legs, she gasped and handed the food basket to Patsy Ruth who distracted the dog by making a clicking noise with her tongue and doing a little dance.
“I think that little beast snagged my hose,” Lorene said as they walked up the hardscrabble slope of the front yard to the porch.
They held the food basket between them as if they were posing for a picture. When Lorene rapped on the door, it was opened with such suddenness that Patsy Ruth emitted a little scream.
“Yes?” the dark man said who looked out at them.
“Mr. Whitlow?” Lorene said with a bright smile, making sure to have the name in her mind so she would get it right.
He opened the door farther. “That’s right,” he said. “I’m Whitlow. And who might you be? You lost? People that come this far out are usually lost.”
“Well, no, we’re not lost. I’m Mrs. Gauss, and this is my daughter, Patsy Ruth.”
“You’re not from the police department, are you?”
“No, nothing like that.”
“I’ve already explained that little matter about the snake all I’m going to. If that child was bit by that snake, it wasn’t my fault. I told him about it beforehand.”
“No, it isn’t anything like that.”
“Well, what then?”
“We’re from the Harmony Hill Christian Ladies’ League. We brought you this basket of food as an offering, as a gesture of good will, with our best wishes and our hope that you enjoy it.”
He looked suspiciously at the basket. “What’s in it?” he asked.
“Oh, uh, a variety of things, I believe. Potted meat, peanut butter, ginger snap cookies, beans, cornbread mix…”
“Any cigarettes in there?”
“Why, no, I don’t think ─ ”
“Just kidding. Come on in. My wife will have to see this for herself.”
He went to the kitchen, leaving Lorene and Patsy Ruth standing just inside the door. When he and his wife came back, she looked at them and squinted like a nocturnal animal unused to the daylight. She didn’t as a rule see strangers in her house and, besides, she was very near-sighted.
“Yes?” she said. “Who’re you?” The corners of her mouth turned down, and her eyes looked worried. She was a person who expected trouble at every turn.
“How do you do? I’m Mrs. Gauss, and this is my daughter, Patsy Ruth.”
Patsy Ruth executed a little curtsey in her church dress as if she were a six-year-old rather than a big, galumphing girl on the verge of womanhood.
“What on earth?” Mrs. Whitlow asked. “What is this all about?”
“It’s not like that,” Mr. Whitlow said. “They brought this, uh, this thing to give us.”
“We’re from the Harmony Hill Christian Ladies’ League,” Lorene intoned. “We brought you this basket of food as an offering, as a gesture of good will, with our best wishes and our hope that you enjoy it.” She held out the basket for Mrs. Whitlow to take, but Mrs. Whitlow only stood there with a bewildered look on her face.
“We won it?”
“No, not exactly,” Lorene said.
“We’re supposed to pay you for it, then?”
“Oh, no, we’re giving it to you. It’s yours to keep.”
“Why are you giving that to me?”
“It’s something we do from time to time. Your name came up on our list.”
“What list is that?”
“For the Lord’s sake,” Mr. Whitlow said. “Quit asking so many questions, and let’s all of us sit down.”
He took the basket from Lorene and set it on a chair beside the door. He then gestured for Lorene and Patsy Ruth to sit on the sofa while he sat in a chair next to the sofa, and Mrs. Whitlow sat on a metal kitchen chair.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked. “A scotch and soda?”
“You came all the way out here to give us this basket?” Mrs. Whitlow asked.
“Why, yes.”
“And we didn’t win it in a radio contest?”
“No.”
“What do we have to do for it?”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
“What’s there to understand?” Mr. Whitlow said. “When somebody’s giving you something, just accept it. You don’t need to know everything.”
Lorene avoided using the words charity or needy ─ poor people could be so touchy ─ but she thought some kind of explanation was in order.
“Well, you see,” she said, “we have this club with about twenty-five active members. We have bazaars and bake sales and things in which we make money. Rather than use the money for something for ourselves, we think it’s a good idea to help some of the people in the community. It’s a community outreach kind of thing.”
“Are you satisfied now?” Mr. Whitlow asked.
“But why us?” Mrs. Whitlow asked. “You don’t even know us.”
“One of the club members submitted your name. I’m not sure who it was.”
“We don’t know anybody in your club.”
“Well, somebody in the club knows of you. Let’s just put it that way.”
Mr. Whitlow stood up. “I want you to meet the rest of the family,” he said. He went into another part of the house and came back pushing a wheelchair containing an old woman with bright red hair. “This is my mother.”
“How do you do?” Lorene said.
Patsy Ruth would have curtseyed again had she not been sitting.
The old woman showed no sign of awareness; her chin rested on her chest, and her eyes were closed. Her breathing was a painful-sounding rasp.
“She’s asleep,” Mrs. Whitlow said. “Why didn’t you at least wake her up?”
“She was awake when I went in,” Mr. Whitlow said. “She went to sleep just that fast.”
“I just dyed her hair yesterday,” Mrs. Whitlow said. “I think it looks pretty, don’t you? It’s kind of a lot of trouble to do it, but I think looking pretty makes her feel better. We have to lay her on her back on the counter and hang her head down in the sink. She puts up a fuss because she thinks we’re trying to drown her.”
Patsy Ruth laughed, and Lorene gave her a sharp look.
“She isn’t well, I take it,” Lorene said.
“She’s got the TB,” Mr. Whitlow said. “Final stages.”
“Do you mean tuberculosis?”
“That’s right. She’s been dying now for about fifteen years.”
“Isn’t that contagious? Shouldn’t she be in a hospital?”
Mr. and Mrs. Whitlow both laughed but Lorene didn’t get the joke.
“Well, all I know is I’ve never caught it from her, and I’ve been living with her under the same roof for my whole life except for the time she spent in jail,” Mr. Whitlow said.
Mrs. Whitlow stood up and went over to the old woman and shook her by the shoulder to wake her up. “We’ve got company, Ethel Jean,” she said, screaming into the old woman’s ear. “These nice ladies from town brought us this basket of food, but I haven’t been able to figure out the reason yet.”
“Huh?” Ethel Jean said. “What did you say? I didn’t say nothing.” She looked around the room, confused. “Who are all these people? It looks like a convention of dodo birds!”
“She exaggerates things,” Mrs. Whitlow said, by way of explanation. “You can’t pay any attention to anything she says. We always just humor her.”
“She thinks what she sees on the TV is really happening,” Mr. Whitlow said. “It confuses her.”
“It’s like having a small child in the house,” Mrs. Whitlow said.
“I think we’d better be running along, don’t you, Patsy Ruth?” Lorene said. “We don’t want to intrude any longer.”
“All right,” Patsy Ruth said.
“Oh, don’t go,” Mrs. Whitlow said. “We so seldom have visitors.”
“She’s right,” Mr. Whitlow said. “You don’t have to go just yet. I want to talk some more.”
“Pay ‘em whatever they ask,” the elder Mrs. Whitlow said. “I don’t care so much about the money. Just make sure they understand what’s expected of them.”
“She’s got an awful pretty hairdo, yes she does,” Mrs. Whitlow said in a baby voice as if she was talking to a small dog.
“You can see what kind of a life I have.” Mr. Whitlow sighed..
“So,” Lorene said, trying to think of something to say, “it must be awfully quiet living this far out of town.”
“It gets so lonely sometimes I think I’ll die,” Mrs. Whitlow said.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Whitlow said. “I’m so used to it I don’t even think about it.”
“You don’t have any children?”
“Two boys,” Mrs. Whitlow said. “They both live a long ways off and never come to visit.”
“Just a distant memory,” Mr. Whitlow said. “They don’t care if we live or die.”
“Do you have any other children?” Mrs. Whitlow asked.
“I have a grown son. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and makes it back home about once a year around Christmastime.”
“Is he married?”
“No, but he has a lovely girlfriend. I think they’ll end up getting married when all is said and done.”
“I know where I’ve seen you!” Mr. Whitlow said.
“What?”
“As soon as you came through the door, I knew I’d seen you but I couldn’t think where. What did you say your name is?”
“Lorene Gauss.”
“What was it before you were married?”
“Albrecht.”
“Lorene Albrecht, of course! Didn’t you go to high school here about twenty-five years ago?”
“Why, yes, I did.”
“I was in that school at the same time. I was a year ahead of you.”
“Whitlow? I don’t remember anybody by that name.”
“Everybody called me Monk, but my real name is Everett.”
“Everett Whitlow? I’m sorry, I don’t remember. It’s been so long ago. My memory of high school is rather hazy.”
“I was one of the retarded hillbilly kids you and your crowd looked down on.”
“Oh?”
“People called me Monk because they said I looked like a monkey. I never did like it.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.”
“My father was Smoky Whitlow, the town drunk. You probably heard of him for all the wrong reasons. He was hit by a freight train one night and cut in half. He was too drunk to get out of the way.”
“Why, yes. I believe I remember that incident. I’m terribly sorry.”
“At the time you were all laughing about it. It made for terribly amusing chit-chat over lunch.”
“I don’t believe I was laughing about such a thing.”
“Mother, hadn’t we better go?” Patsy Ruth asked. “We have a couple other stops to make.”
“My mother had to raise five kids on her own after the old man checked out, but, then, he was never much good anyway, even when he was alive. I worked as a janitor’s helper at the school to make a little money to help out at home. Whenever you and your snooty friends saw me cleaning vomit or piss up off the floor, you laughed at me and made monkey noises.”
“High school was so long ago,” Lorene said. “Are you sure it was me?”
“Once when I was hitchhiking, you came along driving your light-blue Thunderbird, with three or four of your friends in the car with you. When you saw me standing alongside the highway, you stopped like you were going to offer me a ride. As I started to walk toward your car, you threw a dead fish at me wrapped in newspaper and drove off, screaming and laughing.”
“I don’t remember any dead fish. Where would we have got a dead fish?”
“Maybe it would be best to not bring these things up,” Mrs. Whitlow offered.
“I think I hear that rooster again,” Ethel Jean said. “I want to see it again to make sure it’s the same one.”
“Do you remember a fat girl named Ella Sue Risley who always wore old-lady dresses because of her religion?” Mr. Whitlow asked. “You and your friends called her Little Orphan Annie because she had funny eyes.”
“Of course I remember Ella Sue,” Lorene said. “I always felt bad for her.”
“Why was that?”
”I think it was because she never seemed to have any friends.”
“Ella Sue won the school art competition one year for a picture she painted. You thought you should have won it. You were so jealous you had one of your friends in the art department ruin her painting with black paint. When Ella Sue saw what you did, she had an epileptic fit and nearly died.”
“That wasn’t me! That was somebody else. I was never in any art competition. I would never ruin a girl’s painting because I was jealous.”
“I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“It was such a long time ago,” Lorene said with a forced smile. “I don’t remember the dead fish, a ruined painting, or any of the other things you mentioned, but ─ if I’m the cause of such unpleasant memories from your past ─ I apologize.”
“There’s no reason to apologize all these years later. I just want you to know what a swine you were.”
Lorene stood up, as did Patsy Ruth. “Well, it’s been an interesting conversation. There’s nothing like hearing about one’s transgressions from the far-distant past, when, of course, it’s too late to make amends.”
“Make amends,” Mr. Whitlow repeated, also standing.
“You never know when you’re going to be confronted with something that happened a long time ago. It seems there’s no living down certain things, no matter how much time passes.”
“Well, thank you for coming by,” Mrs. Whitlow said. “Maybe we’ll meet up again sometime in the not-too-distant future. Stranger things have happened, you know.”
“Give a yell out the window,” said Ethel Jean, “and tell ‘em you made it through.”
“There’s one thing I’d like you to know,” Lorene said, facing Mr. Whitlow. “If you think I was a swine in high school, that wasn’t the real me. I was going through a phase. I was insecure and longed to be accepted. I felt terrible about some of the things I did. But it’s been so long ago. Am I really not to be forgiven? Was I really so terrible?”
“You thought every boy in high school wanted you, but I never did. I couldn’t stand the sight of you. No matter how pretty you were, no matter how blond your hair or how fancy your clothes, I knew, deep down, you caused misery. If you had cracked up in your pretty little Thunderbird, there would have been no tears shed in certain quarters.”
“Well, you’re rather outspoken, aren’t you? You have a way of getting right to the heart of things.”
“Good-bye, Mrs. Gauss. If you ever see me in passing, I hope you’ll have forgotten we ever met. You seem to not have a very good memory, anyway.”
Lorene and Patsy Ruth went out of the house and down the front yard to the Cadillac. As Lorene opened the door and started to get in, something made her look back toward the house. She saw an object coming toward her in a high arc, an enormous cannonball in slow motion. She could see from its trajectory that it was not going to hit her, so she made no attempt to get out of the way but instead followed it with her eyes, until it landed, with a splintering of wood and glass, about five feet from the car. It took her several seconds to comprehend that the object was, in fact, the reason for the visit: the food basket.
The next day she canceled her membership in the ladies’ club. She had never liked the club anyway; belonging to it was just one of her affectations. She would never again deliver another food basket to the poor for as long as she lived. The poor were no concern of hers. Let other people worry about the poor.