Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle Page B

“Maybe I’ll bring you back some snails.”
    “You can go out in the yard and flip over a rock,” she told him. “We got plenty of snails right here in Saxapaw.” Of all the silly things to talk about and right there on her mama’s front porch. Right there in ear distance of Lena who was pitching a fit to get on a train all by herself and go somewhere.
    “You are not but eleven years old, Rolena Pearson,” their mama said.
    “I’ll go see your people,” Lena squealed like a little pig. “I just want to go somewhere.”
    “Will you wait for me?” James asked and took hold of one of her fingers and squeezed it. She was not but sixteen years old. “Promise me that you’ll be right here, just like this.”
    “I hope so,” she told him. “But I can’t go making promises when I don’t know what’ll happen. You might like those snails and decide to stay.” She had wanted to say, “Yes, yes,” but that would’ve been forward. They were not engaged and she was not going to chase him, a man eight years older, a grown man getting ready to cross the ocean.
    She had cried when her shoulder felt so open and uncovered there while she swayed in the glider, Ginny Sue asleep in her arms, those same spider lilies that were there three nights before when her shoulder was covered, that very last night that she had with him, but there were not enough tears in the world to do him justice. There were not enough and the glider swayed back and forth, back and forth, like that swing at her mama’s house and her hand in that cold brown river water. “Now you got to wait for me,” she whispered and stared down at her hands so tired and calloused, so much needing to reach over and feel him there.
    Her hands would be so tired after doing all that laundry, those towels after all them men had come in and bathed, James’s shirts that would be so dirty from hard work by the end of a day. There wasn’t time to stop, had to hire that colored woman to come from time to time, Mag Sykes; Mag Sykes could work circles around anybody in the county. “Let’s sit a spell,” she’d say to Mag and they would while James was at work and the children at school. “Let’s have a little dip,” Mag would say and she would though no one knew of it. Mag knew and James knew that she’d take a dip, but nobody else needed to know. It was none of their business.
    “Mag?” she calls now and this white woman, a white woman in some brown pants and a flowered shirt comes and stands in the doorway. Oh yes, Esther is here. Mag is not here. It seems Esther is related some way, but she can’t think of how, way on down the line.
    “You needing something, Miss Emily?”
    “Did you ever hear of the Saxapaw River?” She takes out that tin of snuff and puts a little in her gum. Everybody knows about that these days. These days, nobody cares if a person takes a dip of snuff what with what’s on TV.
    “Did I ever hear of it?” Esther sits in the rocking chair close by and laughs. “I live on it. ‘Bout to dry up these days, but let a big rain fall and that river comes right up in my backyard.”
    “Hush now,” Emily says and laughs until the tears come to her eyes. “No telling what comes up out of that river.”
    “I ain’t aiming to go look,” Esther says and takes a sip of the icedtea she is holding. “I know a man that found a body washed up once.”
    “Hush now,” Emily puts her hand up to her chest but still can’t stop the laughing. “I bet that give him a scare.”
    “He was crazy drunk, stood there and talked to that body for awhile.” Esther drains the iced tea and gets up. “I’ll have lunch in a second. I bet you’ll have company before too long.”
    “Company?”
    “Well, Hannah will be here, you know,” Esther says. Esther doesn’t dip, which is good; it’s a habit you can fall under. “Hannah said she might see if Lena feels like getting out.”
    “Lena ain’t doing well,” Emily says. “Now don’t you tell