Page 43 of The Giver of Stars
Men who lived alone around Baileyville, as far as she could make out, lived rough lives, their cabins functional and sparsely furnished, their habits basic and hygiene often questionable. Fred’s house had sanded wood floors, waxed and burnished through years of use; a rocker sat in a corner, a blue rag rug in front of it, and a large brass lamp cast a soft glow over a shelf of books. Pictures lined the wall and an upholstered chair stood opposite, with a view out over the rear of the building and Fred’s large barn full of horses. The gramophone was on a highly polished mahogany table and an intricate old quilt lay neatly folded to its side. ‘But this is beautiful!’ she said, realizing as she did the insult in her words.
He didn’t seem to catch it. ‘Not all my work,’ he said. ‘But I try to keep it nice. Hold on.’
She felt bad, bringing this stench into his sweet-smelling, comfortable home. She crossed her arms and winced as he jogged upstairs, as if that could contain the odour. He wasback in minutes, with two dresses across his arm. ‘One of these should fit.’
She looked up at him. ‘You have dresses?’
‘They were my wife’s.’
She blinked.
‘Hand me your clothes out and I’ll douse them in vinegar. That’ll help. When you take them home get Annie to put some baking soda into the washtub with the soap. Oh, and there’s a clean washcloth on the stand.’
She turned and he gestured towards a bathroom, which she entered. She stripped down, pushed her clothes out through a gap in the door, then washed her face and hands, scrubbing at her skin with the washcloth and lye soap. The acrid smell refused to dissipate; in the confines of the warm little room, it almost made her gag and she scrubbed as hard as she could without actually removing a layer of skin. As an afterthought she poured a jug of water over her head, rubbing at her hair with soap and rinsing it, then rough drying it with a towel. Finally she slipped into the green dress. It was what her mother would have called a tea-dress, short-sleeved and floral with a white lace collar, a little loose around the waist, but at least it smelt clean. There was a bottle of scent on top of a cabinet. She sniffed it, then sprayed a little on her wet hair.
She emerged some minutes later to find Fred standing by the window looking down at the illuminated town square. He turned, his mind clearly lost elsewhere, and perhaps because of his wife’s dress, he seemed suddenly shaken. He recovered himself swiftly and handed her a glass of iced tea. ‘Thought you might need this.’
‘Thank you, Mr Guisler.’ She took a sip. ‘I feel rather silly.’
‘Fred. Please. And don’t feel bad. Not for a minute. We’ve all been caught.’
She stood for a moment, feeling suddenly awkward. She was in a strange man’s home, wearing his dead wife’s dress. She didn’t know what to do with her limbs. A roar went up somewhere in town and she winced. ‘Oh, goodness. I haven’t just made your lovely house smell awful but you’ve missed Tex Lafayette. I’m so sorry.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing. I couldn’t leave you, looking so …’
‘Skunks, eh!’ she said brightly, and his concerned expression didn’t shift, as if he knew that the smell was not the thing that had so upset her.
‘Still! You can probably catch the rest of it if we head back now,’ she said. She had started to gabble. ‘I mean, it looks like he’ll be singing a while. You were quite right. He’sverygood. Not that I heard a huge amount, what with one thing and another, but I can see why he’s so popular. The crowd does seem to love him.’
‘Alice –’
‘Goodness. Look at the time. I’d better head back.’ She walked past him towards the door, her head down. ‘You should absolutely head back to the show. I’ll walk home. It’s no distance.’
‘I’ll drive you.’
‘In case of more skunks?’ Her laugh was high and brittle. Her voice didn’t even sound like her own. ‘Honestly, Mr Guisler – Fred – you’ve been so very kind already and I don’t want to put you to more trouble. Really. I don’t –’
‘I’ll take you,’ he said firmly. He took his jacket from the back of a chair, then removed a small blanket from another and placed it around her shoulders. ‘It’s turned chilly out there.’
They stepped onto the porch. Alice was suddenly acutely aware of Frederick Guisler, of the way he had of observingher, as if looking through whatever she said or did to assess its true purpose. It was oddly discomfiting. She half stumbled down the porch steps and he reached out a hand to steady her. She clutched at it, then immediately let go as if she’d been stung.
Please don’t say anything else, she said silently. Her cheeks were aflame again, her thoughts a jumble. But when she glanced up he wasn’t looking at her.
‘Was that door like that when we came in?’ He was staring at the back of the library. The door, which had been open a sliver to allow in the sound of the music, was now wide open. A series of distant, irregular thumps came from within. He stood very still, then turned to Alice, his ease of the previous minutes gone. ‘Stay there.’
He strode swiftly back inside and then, a moment later, emerged from his house with a large double-barrelled rifle. Alice stepped back as he passed, watching as he walked towards the library. Then, unable to stop herself, she followed a few paces behind, her feet silent on the grass as she tiptoed down the back path.
‘What seems to be the problem here, boys?’
Frederick Guisler stood in the doorway. Behind him Alice, her heart in her mouth, could just make out the scattered books on the floor, an overturned chair. There were two, no, three young men in the library, dressed in jeans and shirts. One held a beer bottle, and another an armful of books, which, as Fred stood there, he dropped with a kind of provocative deliberation. She could just make out Sophia standing, rigid, in the corner, her gaze fixed on some indeterminate point on the floor.
‘You got a coloured in your library.’ The boy’s voice held a nasal whine and was slurred with drink.
‘Yup. And I’m standing here trying to work out what business that is of yours.’
‘This is for white folks. She shouldn’t be here.’
‘Yeah.’ The other two young men, emboldened by beer, jeered back at him.
