Free The Morning and the Evening by Joan Williams Page B

surprise, she thought the kitchen floor had been mopped; then she saw it was just that something had been spilled—the sponge used to dab it up lay nearby.
    Ruth Edna turned before the mirror. “It’s not quite finished. The hem’s just basted.”
    â€œI see.” Hattie saw the thread coming out. “You going uptown? I am.”
    â€œYes. Let’s go.”
    They entered the breezeway and faced across an old apple orchard where the morning sun had just come to rest upon the tops of the squat, gnarled trees. Between the dark glistening leaves the apples hung light green, knotty and hard, and as sweet as they were ever going to get.
    Looking about, Ruth Edna said, “I declare, it’s going to be hot. I best get a towel.”
    She returned to the house, and Hattie crept down the breezeway. She had just gotten to Cotter’s room when Ruth Edna came out another door and spoke right behind her: “He’s there.”
    â€œRuth Edna—!” Hattie’s little hands flew to her sparse breasts. Then breathless, she turned and bobbed up and down before Cotter’s screen door trying to see inside his room. “Why! Is that you, Brother Cotter?”
    â€œOh, stop all that smirking up your face. He can’t see out through that screen any better’n you can see in,” Ruth Edna said.
    â€œWhy, Ruth Edna …” Hattie said.
    â€œDon’t pay no mind to her, Miss Hattie,” Cotter said. “She ain’t off right in the morning till she’s had at somebody.”
    â€œAre we going uptown or not?” Ruth Edna said.
    â€œWho’s waiting for you there?” Cotter said. “Gary Cooper?”
    â€œNow, you two,” Hattie said. She was going to say goodbye, but suddenly with the condition Cotter was in, it seemed too final. She cried instead, “Keep alive …!” intending it to be cheery. Then realizing, she sank into herself horrified and fled the yard like a stray being chunked at.
    Ruth Edna caught up with her at the gate. “I declare to my soul, Hattie McGaha. I always have thought your head was stuffed with fruitcake. Now I know it.”
    She wrapped her arms in the towel and folded them across her breasts, mummylike. She went ahead, and Hattie came along behind, a black umbrella opened over her head large as a parachute, covering her entirely except for her tottery legs beneath going along like a pair of old scissors, one barely slipping by the other.
    From the wooden walk Ruth Edna could see their shadows chasing each other on the road below, wavery as water images. If Hattie hadn’t carried that black mortuary-looking umbrella, they could have walked side by side instead of single file like this, looking like fools, she thought. She turned around and looked at Hattie hurrying along half out from under the umbrella, vulnerable as a turtle out of its shell, a smudge in the middle of her forehead. From Cotter’s screen, she’d bet. She called, “Hattie, you got black soot all over your face.”
    â€œOh, Ruth Edna!” Hattie cried; her mind jumped backward to who all they had seen, walking uptown. She lowered the umbrella and stood with the handle crooked over her arm like a parrot’s beak, scrubbing at her face with a Kleenex till it fell into shreds.
    Exasperated, Ruth Edna said, “Oh come on. You’re not gettin’ married today.” She went ahead, thinking of a similar incident that happened once in a Memphis department store. She had a prissy little salesgirl who was annoyed because Ruth Edna didn’t make up her mind. Finally she told the girl, “Honey, you got a big black smudge in the middle of your forehead.”
    â€œIt’s Ash Wednesday,” the girl said.
    That got the better of Ruth Edna. She slammed down the thread she had selected and left the store, boycotted it even through a sale on cotton dresses. Then, regretfully, she told Cotter the