Sweet and Deadly aka Dead Dog

When she had been in her teens, a group of them would stand on the bluff and shout to the bargemen, their voices carrying across the river. The bargemen would sometimes sound the deep barge horn in reply.

“It’s better at night,” Randall observed after a peaceful interval.

She remembered. The lights, shining over the dark water until the barge was out of sight around the bend in the river.

“We’ll stay until one comes,” he said.

He inched back on his rear until he was behind Catherine, his legs on either side of her. His thick fingers began to work gently in her hair, separating strands, combing them through. Catherine was catlike in her pleasure, her eyes half closed, delight running down her spine.

“It’s like a bowl, the rim of a bowl,” she murmured. His fingers brushed her scalp and she shivered. “No beginning, no end. The river goes on and on. And kids come out to watch it in the night.”

“And barges come down with lights on.”

“The cotton grows,” she said, “and they harvest it and plant more.”

“And there are the same roles to be taken in the town,” he said. “Different people assume them. But they all get taken and worked, over and over-mayor, town drunk, planter. Newspaper editor.”

“Dogs get hit by cars,” she said, her voice sharpening, losing its drowsy dreamy pitch.

“And there are other dogs,” Randall said quietly. His hands rested in her hair, still, waiting.

“Other dogs,” she agreed after a moment, and his hands began moving.

She had almost lost their moment when she once again saw a large dun-colored dog lying by the side of a dusty road. But the continuity of the river, mirroring the continuity of their town, washed away that picture in its current.

They moved into the shade when Catherine’s skin began to prickle. Randall lay under a dilapidated picnic table, reckless of ants and other interested insects. Catherine lay on her stomach on top of the table, peering down at him. She was not afraid of ants, not today, but she wanted to see his face.

“What did you do in Washington?” she asked lazily.

“I gave out the senator’s press releases. I told people things. I leaked information on request.” He laughed.

“Did you want to come back?”

“Not at first. I had forgotten how it was. I was proud I was a citizen of the bigger world.”

“And later?”

“Well,” he said more slowly, “I didn’t resent the family-legacy thing after a while. Once I got back into living in Lowfield, it all seemed right and natural.”

“Do you miss Washington, and being in the center of things? A citizen of the bigger world?”

He thought. Catherine watched the ripple of his muscles as he put his arms behind his head.

“When I’ve been in Lowfield for a while,” he answered slowly, “it seems like the center of things.”

“Can you see without your glasses?” Catherine asked solemnly.

“No,” said Randall and smiled. He took them off and blinked at her blindly. “Do you get tired of writing up weddings?”

“They’re all the same: only the names have been changed,” she said. “I like it mostly. It needs to be done, and it keeps me busy. It makes people happy…Did you want to hire me?”

“I knew you could do it,” Randall said. “I just wondered why you wanted to. Then I talked to my mother, who still has half-interest in the paper. She was absolutely sure that you were exactly what the Gazette needed. I think she had designs on you.”

Catherine raised her eyebrows.

“She was tired of my catting off to Memphis bars.”

“Oh.” Catherine blinked.

“Time coasted by, and I was busy and you were quiet and did your work and went home.”

Catherine said, “Um.”

“And gradually, as I began to remember the reason I thought she wanted you at the paper, I began to look at you.”

“I didn’t realize.”

“I know, and I was mad as hell. I said, ‘Randall, you’re twelve years older than this girl, and you prance by her desk a dozen times a day, and she doesn’t look up. When you talk to her, she just nods and goes back to work.’” He opened his eyes to cock a look at Catherine. She kept her face still. “‘And she looks at you blankly,’” he said.

Catherine laughed.

“I practically doubled my running time in the evening and added five pounds to my weights.”

She reached down to touch his shoulder appreciatively.

“And I was scared to ask you out, because you were an employee, and how would you feel you could refuse? I didn’t know how you’d react.”

“You came when I was in trouble,” she said. “I see you now.”

“This isn’t how things usually go,” he said.

“I know.”

They saw their barge.

It swept around the bend in the river, majestic in the night. Its lights shone across the water.

Randall shouted, and the answering sound of the horn drifted, melancholy and beautiful, over the dark moving river.

“I have gumbo,” Catherine said, on their way back into town.

“It was contributed by Mrs. Perkins; she’s from Louisiana, and I’m sure she’s an excellent gumbo cook.”

“Is that an offer?”

“Yes,” she said, shy again since they had left the levee.

“I’m hungry.”

The gumbo was excellent.

“Shall I stay?” he asked.

The weight of the next day descended prematurely. They would become employer and employee again. Then she couldn’t stand herself for letting the thought cross her mind.

She was tempted to say yes, to get all the good out of this day she could, fearing it might not last, might never happen again. She had not trusted tomorrow for a long time.

She gambled.

“No, let’s wait,” she said.

8

AFTER THE SHOCK, fear, and joy of the weekend, Monday began badly. Catherine wanted to wear something she had never worn to the office before, in Randall’s honor. But her closet held only the unexciting shirtwaists she had worn as a freshman in college, when girls still wore dresses to class. She had worn them all scores of times.

If Randall and I go out this weekend, I’ll have to go to Memphis one evening this week and buy something to wear, she thought cautiously. I’m damned if I’ll wear one of these.

She pulled on her least-faded dress, in a snit of anger at herself.

“Morning,” she said curtly to Leila Masham as she entered the Gazette’s front door, which faced onto the town square. Her temper was not improved by the sight of long-legged Leila in a brand-new summer dress that bared Leila’s golden shoulders. The girl flagged her down with an urgent wave, so Catherine had to stop instead of marching through the reporters’ room.

Catherine expected inquiries about the weekend’s big incident, but single-minded Leila whispered theatrically, “Tom came in early this morning!” The girl’s brown eyes were open wide at this unprecedented beginning to a Monday.

“He didn’t have to drive down from Memphis,” Catherine whispered back, reminded of Leila’s infatuation in time