The Postmistress
by Carl Parsons
1.
The Ohio River makes its long descent from Pittsburgh more or less to the southwest. But at Locust Hill, West Virginia, it encounters a steep embankment—a series of cliffs, really—that forces the river to bend toward the west before it again finds its way south. The inhabitants of that spot call it Zion Ridge, though mostly by that name they mean just the rolling hills at the tops of the cliffs, the places where they live.
So steep and densely forested are Zion Ridge’s cliff sides that no one has ever attempted to farm them or graze their livestock there, for even goats and sheep find the terrain difficult. And while many families have owned parcels of that land since their forefathers first wrenched them from the Shawnees, the cliffs themselves remain wild.
Atop Zion Ridge lie its scattered farms—some devoted to dairy, some to corn, but most to seasonal produce. Many of the fields are without houses since the holdings are often scattered, the fields of one family separated from their homestead by the fields of their neighbors.
In this rural setting, a scandal once developed and persisted for many years. It involved the postmistress, Livia Perkins, a wildcat of a woman, and her man, Harvey Satterfield, an amiable, ruddy-faced construction worker, whose family had lived on the ridge longer than anyone could remember. Despite Livia’s temperament and facility with profanity, she was authorized by the United States Postal Service to manage its Zion Ridge facility. The USPS even allowed Zion Ridge its own address, separate from that of the nearby Locust Hill office, and produced a rubber stamp with which Livia could duly authorize that posts sent from her parlor truly came from Zion Ridge.
For that is where the Zion Ridge Post Office was located—in the front room of Livia’s farmhouse with its worn wooden floor, divided lengthwise by a long table separating the work area from the narrow reception room and its coal-burning fireplace. On that table, from the patrons’ vantage point, sat a tall wooden wall that presented them a set of poster boards framed in walnut on which Livia duly placed the regulations of the Postal Service along with the FBI’s “Wanted Posters.” Between two of these poster boards was a grill through which Livia could greet her patrons and hand them their mail and stamps. For larger packages, the patrons simply walked to the far end of the table, which did not extend to the room’s rear wall. Thus, the wooden wall that greeted the patrons was something of a sham.
On the work side of the table, however, the wooden assembly consisted of a set of pigeonholes with the names of Zion Ridge’s residents on labels thumbtacked below their assigned slots according to their addresses. Those who preferred to pick up their own mail had red labels; those who relied on the postal carrier, white. Livia sorted the mail into these slots each morning before the postal carrier arrived. She then helped him load his truck for the day’s deliveries, gave him instructions about any packages to be delivered and sent him on his way by 8:00 AM.
While there was rarely a complaint from the patrons about their postal service, there was in time, an accretion of heated opinions, volcanic at time, about its postmistress, her man, and their affair.
So steep and densely forested are Zion Ridge’s cliff sides that no one has ever attempted to farm them or graze their livestock there, for even goats and sheep find the terrain difficult. And while many families have owned parcels of that land since their forefathers first wrenched them from the Shawnees, the cliffs themselves remain wild.
Atop Zion Ridge lie its scattered farms—some devoted to dairy, some to corn, but most to seasonal produce. Many of the fields are without houses since the holdings are often scattered, the fields of one family separated from their homestead by the fields of their neighbors.
In this rural setting, a scandal once developed and persisted for many years. It involved the postmistress, Livia Perkins, a wildcat of a woman, and her man, Harvey Satterfield, an amiable, ruddy-faced construction worker, whose family had lived on the ridge longer than anyone could remember. Despite Livia’s temperament and facility with profanity, she was authorized by the United States Postal Service to manage its Zion Ridge facility. The USPS even allowed Zion Ridge its own address, separate from that of the nearby Locust Hill office, and produced a rubber stamp with which Livia could duly authorize that posts sent from her parlor truly came from Zion Ridge.
For that is where the Zion Ridge Post Office was located—in the front room of Livia’s farmhouse with its worn wooden floor, divided lengthwise by a long table separating the work area from the narrow reception room and its coal-burning fireplace. On that table, from the patrons’ vantage point, sat a tall wooden wall that presented them a set of poster boards framed in walnut on which Livia duly placed the regulations of the Postal Service along with the FBI’s “Wanted Posters.” Between two of these poster boards was a grill through which Livia could greet her patrons and hand them their mail and stamps. For larger packages, the patrons simply walked to the far end of the table, which did not extend to the room’s rear wall. Thus, the wooden wall that greeted the patrons was something of a sham.
On the work side of the table, however, the wooden assembly consisted of a set of pigeonholes with the names of Zion Ridge’s residents on labels thumbtacked below their assigned slots according to their addresses. Those who preferred to pick up their own mail had red labels; those who relied on the postal carrier, white. Livia sorted the mail into these slots each morning before the postal carrier arrived. She then helped him load his truck for the day’s deliveries, gave him instructions about any packages to be delivered and sent him on his way by 8:00 AM.
While there was rarely a complaint from the patrons about their postal service, there was in time, an accretion of heated opinions, volcanic at time, about its postmistress, her man, and their affair.
2.
“Dammit, Liv, why not? After all this time! Don’t you love me anymore?”
This was Harvey’s perennial question to Livia, asked in a plaintive, almost whining tone. His proposals broke ground, grew, and bloomed about every six months, especially when he’d been away for weeks at some construction site, driving rivets into steel plates. The proposals were sown by loneliness and self-contempt, but also by genuine love and concern for Livia’s reputation, which Harvey couldn’t quite concede had been compromised long ago by their romance.
“Of course, I love you, but that don’t matter. I’m not goin’ to marry you. We’ve had twenty-one good years together, so why mess it all up now with a piece of paper that don’t mean nothin’ no how. Just causes trouble, if you ask me. And you’re just doin’ this cause of what people say. To hell with what they say! That shouldn’t matter to us. We’re together like we want to be and that’s enough.” Livia never in these arguments allowed for the possibility that Harvey might truly want to marry her.
So, this was the same answer, the same pruning back of the same withering rose, only to have it bloom again in a new season of shame. They would love, he would feel remorse for having taken advantage of her, he would propose again, she would say no again, and then they would argue again, just as they were doing now. Afterwards, he would go away, feeling hurt and rejected. Then he’d be back with gifts and sweet words. And she would welcome him—and the gifts—with love and late dinners. They would drive into town daily. As they went, people would see them and gossip. He would hear their calumny, repeated quite often by his own family, and feel once again the piercing guilt they intended him to feel. Then he’d propose again—the only way he believed to end the cycle. For twenty-one years he had proposed. The whole process was just as lovely and satisfying to Livia now as it had been when it first began. But for Harvey it was just as frustrating and damning.
“No roses without some thorns,” she’d tell him as he moped, flopped down in his recliner, pretending to read the Parkeston Morning News. She would rock with her Chihuahua in her lap, a dog he’d given her after one of their quarrels, and she’d stare at him, smiling when he’d look her way over the top of his newspaper. Soon his hurt would soften enough for him to speak again. He’s just noticed something in the paper they should investigate in town. Yes, now, this afternoon, since the post office is closed. Some items on sale downtown—Parkeston’s Old Fashioned Bargain Days, in fact. Store clerks in costumes. They’d already missed the morning parade, but still they should go and see the town pretending to be what it once was and never will be again. She’d agree. Then satisfied for the moment that he was truly loved, Harvey would scan the rest of the newspaper, always looking for items that might interest his Liv.
This was Harvey’s perennial question to Livia, asked in a plaintive, almost whining tone. His proposals broke ground, grew, and bloomed about every six months, especially when he’d been away for weeks at some construction site, driving rivets into steel plates. The proposals were sown by loneliness and self-contempt, but also by genuine love and concern for Livia’s reputation, which Harvey couldn’t quite concede had been compromised long ago by their romance.
“Of course, I love you, but that don’t matter. I’m not goin’ to marry you. We’ve had twenty-one good years together, so why mess it all up now with a piece of paper that don’t mean nothin’ no how. Just causes trouble, if you ask me. And you’re just doin’ this cause of what people say. To hell with what they say! That shouldn’t matter to us. We’re together like we want to be and that’s enough.” Livia never in these arguments allowed for the possibility that Harvey might truly want to marry her.
So, this was the same answer, the same pruning back of the same withering rose, only to have it bloom again in a new season of shame. They would love, he would feel remorse for having taken advantage of her, he would propose again, she would say no again, and then they would argue again, just as they were doing now. Afterwards, he would go away, feeling hurt and rejected. Then he’d be back with gifts and sweet words. And she would welcome him—and the gifts—with love and late dinners. They would drive into town daily. As they went, people would see them and gossip. He would hear their calumny, repeated quite often by his own family, and feel once again the piercing guilt they intended him to feel. Then he’d propose again—the only way he believed to end the cycle. For twenty-one years he had proposed. The whole process was just as lovely and satisfying to Livia now as it had been when it first began. But for Harvey it was just as frustrating and damning.
“No roses without some thorns,” she’d tell him as he moped, flopped down in his recliner, pretending to read the Parkeston Morning News. She would rock with her Chihuahua in her lap, a dog he’d given her after one of their quarrels, and she’d stare at him, smiling when he’d look her way over the top of his newspaper. Soon his hurt would soften enough for him to speak again. He’s just noticed something in the paper they should investigate in town. Yes, now, this afternoon, since the post office is closed. Some items on sale downtown—Parkeston’s Old Fashioned Bargain Days, in fact. Store clerks in costumes. They’d already missed the morning parade, but still they should go and see the town pretending to be what it once was and never will be again. She’d agree. Then satisfied for the moment that he was truly loved, Harvey would scan the rest of the newspaper, always looking for items that might interest his Liv.
3.
Every Wednesday morning the most devout and earnest women of the Zion Ridge Temple of Mercy would set aside their farm and household chores to clean the church and prepare it for the Wednesday night service. While removing their cleaning equipment from the utility closet in the church’s basement-fellowship hall, they would gossip.
They’d haul pails and brooms, polishes and polishing rags, dust mops and an old Electrolux sweeper with a friction tape patch on its electrical cord up the church’s narrow stairs. As they ascended, they’d pulled themselves along by clutching the black galvanized pipe that served as a handrail. Their weekly goal was to make the interior of the aging church as clean and attractive as it was capable of being; responsibility for the church’s exterior they gladly conceded to their men.
But as they swept and dusted and polished, one constant thought galled them—just down the road, within plain sight of the church—was a den of promiscuity. And no amount of polishing had yet erased that blemish from their community. To make matters worse, the sordid hands of the fallen woman living there daily touched their letters and packages—items that came into their very homes and might even be touched by their children! Moreover, it was into this house of evil that they had to go to conduct their own postal transactions!
As they cleaned and dusted in small clutches, they spoke of this problem in increasingly hostile tones.
“Something must be done about her?” said one.
“Who?” asked the other.
“You know very well who—that Livia just down the road from here—that’s who!”
“Well, I agree, but what can we do?”
“Not we. I think that Preacher must do it. It’s gone on long enough. I’m surprised he hasn’t been willing to take on the job by now.”
“I think all the men are afraid of her, if you want to know the truth.”
“Or agree with her way of thinkin’ about things,” offered a third lady who had overheard the other two and now joined them. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she went on. “I think we need to have Preacher’s wife talk for us. She can let him know just how we feel and that we’ve put up with this all we’re goin’ to. Don’t you think I’m right?”
“You’re so right,” said the first. “Fact, I’m goin’ downstairs right now and talk to Susan Whitlatch. You just watch me!”
They’d haul pails and brooms, polishes and polishing rags, dust mops and an old Electrolux sweeper with a friction tape patch on its electrical cord up the church’s narrow stairs. As they ascended, they’d pulled themselves along by clutching the black galvanized pipe that served as a handrail. Their weekly goal was to make the interior of the aging church as clean and attractive as it was capable of being; responsibility for the church’s exterior they gladly conceded to their men.
But as they swept and dusted and polished, one constant thought galled them—just down the road, within plain sight of the church—was a den of promiscuity. And no amount of polishing had yet erased that blemish from their community. To make matters worse, the sordid hands of the fallen woman living there daily touched their letters and packages—items that came into their very homes and might even be touched by their children! Moreover, it was into this house of evil that they had to go to conduct their own postal transactions!
As they cleaned and dusted in small clutches, they spoke of this problem in increasingly hostile tones.
“Something must be done about her?” said one.
“Who?” asked the other.
“You know very well who—that Livia just down the road from here—that’s who!”
“Well, I agree, but what can we do?”
“Not we. I think that Preacher must do it. It’s gone on long enough. I’m surprised he hasn’t been willing to take on the job by now.”
“I think all the men are afraid of her, if you want to know the truth.”
“Or agree with her way of thinkin’ about things,” offered a third lady who had overheard the other two and now joined them. “I’ll tell you what I think,” she went on. “I think we need to have Preacher’s wife talk for us. She can let him know just how we feel and that we’ve put up with this all we’re goin’ to. Don’t you think I’m right?”
“You’re so right,” said the first. “Fact, I’m goin’ downstairs right now and talk to Susan Whitlatch. You just watch me!”
4.
But among the men of Zion Ridge there was great respect for Livia. In particular, the members of the Carvers Club, who met each Saturday morning at the Locust Hill Feed & Seed Store, often mixed her praises with the wood shavings they brushed from their laps—onto the floor by the wood stove in the raw weather or onto the store porch in the mild.
These men and those who stopped to chat with them held contrarian views on many topics, but most of all on matters associated with Livia. “The women, they gossip ‘bout her,” the men maintained, “whereas we discuss, analyze and understand the doings of our community right down to the fine causes and effects. Damned if we don’t. And we’re all better for it.”
The group was headed by Burt Farley, owner of the seed store and a highly skilled wood carver. He was a man who led mostly by virtue of his brevity.
“What’ch you whittling there, Burt?” Billy Fairmont would ask him.
“Bowie knife,” would come Burt’s reply.
“A Bowie knife, you say?”
“Yep.” Burt would hold up the objet d’art for Billy to see.
“So, you’re usin’ a knife to make a knife, is that what yer asayin’?”
“I am.”
And so their conversations would go—rambling questions, brief answers. But when their conversations turned to local affairs, especially regarding Livia, they’d all become loquacious.
“You suppose them church ladies are ever gonna get ole Liv kicked out of the Post Office?” they’d ask each other.
“Naw, I don’t think they will,” someone would reply. “And what’s more, they just better watch out or ole Liv’ll take a fit an’ go an’ scratch their eyes out—just like some of them cats she lets live in her barn. Liv don’t put up with much. She’s got spunk.”
“Yep, got to admire her for that,” another would add. “Besides, I believe a damn big ole cat fight would do Zion Ridge a lot of good! Clean the air better’n a thunderstorm.” Then they’d all laugh before going back to their whittling, a pile of graceful white pine curls collecting on the floor in front of them.
These men and those who stopped to chat with them held contrarian views on many topics, but most of all on matters associated with Livia. “The women, they gossip ‘bout her,” the men maintained, “whereas we discuss, analyze and understand the doings of our community right down to the fine causes and effects. Damned if we don’t. And we’re all better for it.”
The group was headed by Burt Farley, owner of the seed store and a highly skilled wood carver. He was a man who led mostly by virtue of his brevity.
“What’ch you whittling there, Burt?” Billy Fairmont would ask him.
“Bowie knife,” would come Burt’s reply.
“A Bowie knife, you say?”
“Yep.” Burt would hold up the objet d’art for Billy to see.
“So, you’re usin’ a knife to make a knife, is that what yer asayin’?”
“I am.”
And so their conversations would go—rambling questions, brief answers. But when their conversations turned to local affairs, especially regarding Livia, they’d all become loquacious.
“You suppose them church ladies are ever gonna get ole Liv kicked out of the Post Office?” they’d ask each other.
“Naw, I don’t think they will,” someone would reply. “And what’s more, they just better watch out or ole Liv’ll take a fit an’ go an’ scratch their eyes out—just like some of them cats she lets live in her barn. Liv don’t put up with much. She’s got spunk.”
“Yep, got to admire her for that,” another would add. “Besides, I believe a damn big ole cat fight would do Zion Ridge a lot of good! Clean the air better’n a thunderstorm.” Then they’d all laugh before going back to their whittling, a pile of graceful white pine curls collecting on the floor in front of them.
5.
Preacher Amos Whitlach drove an old Ford, for everyone in Locust Hill owned a Ford, even out on Zion Ridge, if they owned a car at all. And if they didn’t, most likely there was someone else in the family who did own some kind of Ford—perhaps a tractor or a truck. Amos’s Ford came to a stop just beyond the stone walkway that led straight, more or less, from Zion Road to Livia Perkins’s front porch. He had pulled across the road to park, so that now his Ford was facing the oncoming traffic, which normally consisted of no more than one vehicle every half hour. He stepped from his car into the dusty roadside weeds which soiled his black trousers before further steps placed him in the mowed grass of Livia’s front yard. He was wearing his dark suit, even on this hot July day, since he considered what he was about to do official church business.
He looked at the house that was also the Zion Ridge Post Office; a weathered sign over the porch entrance said so. A story and one-half high, the farmhouse had a metal roof troubled by vast patches of rust. An aged, faded red chimney, blackened along the top but idle on this hot summer day, rose up from the middle of the roof. The roof itself slanted steeply toward the road before its pitch leveled out considerably above the porch. The porch sat little more than the width of a floor joist above the ground and was reached by a large steppingstone with an uneven surface that often-held ice in the winter. The ladies of the church had declared this stone a purely deliberate trip hazard.
Despite its many imperfections, the house had withstood the vicissitudes of West Virginia weather for more than eighty years. Now the whole thing was just shy of dilapidation. Only thinning vestiges of white paint peeked out here and there from crevices in the wood siding. Otherwise, the house was weathered to a dull grey.
Along its right side was a smaller porch with a sagging floor, due no doubt to a rotting joist or two. There, Amos saw a black cat curled into a ball, snug against a galvanized wash tub. In the yard chickens clucked, cackled, pecked, and strutted. A few steps from the side porch was a cistern, topped with a cast iron hand pump.
Having heard the car stop, Livia was already standing on the front porch, her arms crossed, looking hard in Preacher Whitlach’s direction. “Howdee, Amos!” she called to him and waved with exaggerated neighborliness as he walked toward her, for she loved to have visitors, even though she was wary of this one. “What brings you here?” She never called him Preacher as all the other people on Zion Ridge would do. She had known him as a feral teenager and just couldn’t adjust to the reality of his having grown up and become a Man of God.
“Thought I’d come visit for a bit, Liv, if that’s all right,” he replied, stepping up on the porch without tripping on the cursèd stone. “Haven’t seen you for such a long while. How have you been?”
“Fine,” she replied. Though still suspicious of his real motives, she asked, “Want some lemonade? I made some fresh this mornin’, figurin’ it would be another hot day. Got it in the ice box. Plenty cold by now.”
“Lemonade would be just dandy, Liv, it really would. Could we have it here on the porch, though? There is a bit of breeze come up from the river, and maybe some rain on the way, too.”
“Well, I hope so. My cistern’s nearly gone dry.” Then she added, “Yeah, sure, we can have it here.”
Livia entered the house, letting the screen door bang close behind her, stirring up a small cloud of flies which had hoped to follow her inside. Amos could hear Livia’s footsteps crossing the wooden floor of the post office-parlor, heading toward the kitchen at the back of the house. Her infamous Chihuahua, Tiny, was yipping madly as she went.
Amos seated himself on the porch swing, thinking its motion might cool him on this humid day. Besides, he knew that Livia always sat in one of the two wooden rockers she kept on the porch. The only other chair was reserved for Harvey, who today was miles away, slung over the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, most likely driving rivets into a bridge support as part of a repair project.
As Amos made himself comfortable, he saw the black cat again, wide awake now, hopping onto the far end of the porch. It seemed so much larger than before and displayed an extraordinary suppleness, even for a cat. Unlike Livia’s other cats, tattered and torn as they were, this one was sleek and comely, as though it were brushed and groomed daily. Its dense black fur seemed iridescent in the sunlight. Stopping beside Livia’s rocker and sitting back on its haunches, the cat stared at Amos with bright golden eyes, eyes that glowed with danger and cunning and some unknowable, unearthly power—immense and ominous it seemed to Amos.
Livia returned with a large round glass pitcher filled with lemonade. She carried it in one hand and two plain drinking glasses in the other. Thin slices of lemon swam in the pitcher and some ice cubes clinked against its sides. Livia turned and pushed the screen door open with her hip. She backed onto the porch with a motion that somehow she made graceful, all the while yelling mild curses at Tiny, who, though still out of sight, was determined to escape the house, bite the preacher’s ankles, and thus confirm local opinion that he was a dog from some torrid Mexican hell.
“Here, hold yer glass out,” Livia instructed Amos after giving him one of the drinking glasses. “The dog’ll shut up soon. Don’t worry about him.” She poured lemonade into Amos’s glass and then into hers. Taking a quick sip as she moved, Livia seated herself in her rocker before placing the pitcher beside her on the dusty porch floor. The black cat looked at her and then at Amos before leaping with a single swift motion into Livia’s lap. She had just enough time to move her glass out of the way before the cat nestled into the folds of her gingham apron. There it resumed staring at Amos.
Amos tasted the lemonade and puckered a bit at its tartness before saying, “That’s a beautiful cat, Liv.” He was truly surprised at its grooming, for of all the stories that swirled around Zion Ridge concerning Livia, and there were many, none, not even ones about Harvey, were more persistent than those tales concerning her barn full of partially dismembered cats—cats which preyed on one another, fought for the very delight and devilment of torturing and killing their own kind, since they had long ago eaten every rodent and bird within a mile of the barn. Cats, they were, with missing eyes and ears, cats that limped and groaned with pain and grief, cats with oozing wounds and bleeding eyes, cats reputed to carry off small dogs, rabbits, gerbils, and other pets from the surrounding farms, snatching them at times from within their homes and dragging them into this barn of horrors where they were harried to death, slowly, since cats always deny their prey the dignity of sudden death. With the coming of each dusk, their feline cries and howls and shrieks issued from the barn as they might from a pack of demons in some ritual dance, cries that canceled the softer sounds of whippoorwills and great horned owls in the woods about Zion Ridge. The cats, people said, had formed their own cult and now were beholden to no one, not even Livia. They, like the Chihuahua, were actually the Devil’s own creatures.
“Thanks,” said Livia. “Yes, he’s my favorite of all the cats ‘round here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why, his name’s S…,” Livia caught herself, just in time to change “Satan” to “Sam.” She thought for a moment about whether lying to a preacher is a mortal sin but quickly decided that it couldn’t be, given the track records of most preachers she knew. Satan sat up in Livia’s lap at the sound of the strange name and looked into her face with a puzzled expression, as if to say, “Who the hell is Sam?”
“That’s a mighty plain name for such an elegant cat,” Amos noted. “Why, he looks like a small panther instead of a normal cat.”
Livia smiled. “That just what he thinks he is—or more.” She sipped at her lemonade again to clear her throat, for she had decided that now was the time to start in on Amos. “But I bet you didn’t come here to talk to me about cats, now did you?”
“Well no, I didn’t.” No matter how well people knew Livia, they were rarely prepared for her bluntness.
“Then why are you here? The post office is closed for the day. Can’t sell you no stamps, even if I wanted to.”
“Oh, I don’t need stamps or anything to do with the mail.”
“That’s right. I know you don’t, ‘cause I gave your mail to the carrier for your route this morning, so you got it already. You’re here for some other reason. Now what is it?”
“Well, Liv, this is a hard matter to broach.”
“Broach? Is that some preacher word you learned? Just spit it out, Amos. What is it?”
“Well, Liv, it’s that some people don’t approve of you being postmistress anymore.”
“And what is it they don’t like, as if I didn’t already know.” Livia had many sympathetic informers all around Zion Ridge.
“Well, there’s several things. First, they’re afraid of your dog, Tiny. You have to admit that he’s a might feisty. And likes to nip an ankle or two when he gets a chance.”
“I already took care of that and discussed it with my boss, the postal inspector in Parkeston. When the post office is open, I keep Tiny in the kitchen behind a gate. That dog can’t get out no way. Besides, how people could be so scared of such a little dog is beyond me. So that’s not it. Now what is, really?”
“Well…there’s Harvey, too.”
“Harvey! Hell, he don’t bite anybody. An’ I’m damn sure not goin’ to keep him behind a gate, if that’s what you’re goin’ for. Fact is, there’s not a kinder man in this whole county than Harvey Satterfield and I’ll pull the hair outta anyone who says different, preacher or not!”
“Now take it easy, Liv. It’s not me asayin’ this.”
“No, it’s them damn hypocrite women in your church asayin’ it! That’s who it is! And you know I’m right.”
“Well yes, it is our church women.”
“See, I knew it!”
“But you got to look at it their way, too, Liv. They’re good Christian women just tryin’ to live by their faith.”
“And how am I astoppin’ ‘em? Just answer me that!”
“Well, to their way of thinkin’, your house is a sinful place ‘cause you let Harvey stay here without bein’ married to him, yet this is where they have to come for their postal service. People see Harvey goin’ up the road from here real late at night sometimes, and that don’t seem right to ‘em.”
“I suppose they do see him. And if they’d git up early enough, sometimes they might see him slippin’ up the road then, four or five or six in the morning, if they’ve a mind to look. Sometimes he don’t even go up the road at all, if you really want to know the whole truth. But what of it? Nothin’ we’re ashamed of, I can tell you that. And nothin’ that’s anybody else’s business! It’s mine and his’n and no one else’s, not even yours, Amos Whitlatch.”
“No, maybe not mine directly, but it is God’s business to look over all of us and judge us in the end for what we do.”
“Then some of them ole biddies that’s apointin’ their fingers at me are in for a whole lot of trouble, I can tell you that, preacher man, if that’s the game you want to play.” Livia was leaning forward now, looking as though she were about to leap from her rocker. Even Satan was disturbed enough to jump down from her lap and sit beside her again, yet ever alert to encourage a fight, just as he liked to do with the barn cats.
Amos set his glass of lemonade on a nearby windowsill, the better to fend off Livia’s attacks. “They’re just concerned, Liv,” he continued, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, “concerned about the message all this conveys to the young people in our community. We don’t want them growin’ up thinkin’ that marriage is . . . well, optional. That’s not God’s plan for us.”
“Well, since your bringin’ that up, just what is God’s plan for us? Was it His plan to take my daddy away from me and my brother and our mother, leaving us with next to nothin’ to live on after he died? Was it His plan to make my mother have to work in a factory and leave us kids alone all day with just a neighbor woman or two good enough to check on us? Was it His plan to make me leave school in eighth grade and go to work making cardboard boxes so we could have something to eat and clothes to wear, but with no chance ever again for me to learn anything? So just go on and tell me about them high kaflootin’ plans God’s got for us, ‘cause I’d really like to know.”
“We all face hard times, Liv. That ain’t nothin’ new, nor is it somethin’ that hit only your family. Plenty of folks around here have had it even worse that you, but God brought you through it all. Now you got a nice job and a home of your own.”
“You’re damn right I do because I fought for them. Nobody give ‘em to me. Now some people—your wife included—and don’t think I don’t know this—want to take it all away from me ‘cause they think that cause they go to church and I don’t that they’re better than me. Ain’t that it, when you get right down to it?”
Amos shook his head but had no chance to reply.
“Well, they may think they’re better, but by heavens they’re not!”
“No, now wait, Liv, I don’t think that’s it. When I say God’s plan for us, I mean He intends for us to live by His law. In this case, why don’t you and Harvey just git married? You obviously love each other and belong together. And have for a long time. Why, marriage would solve the whole problem. And I’d be glad to do the service for you—in private, if you like. Nobody’s got a problem with you two bein’ together—as long as you’re married.”
“So, because some women who don’t even really know us want to bitch and complain, we’re supposed to git married! Well, they can go to hell and you can lead the parade, if that’s what you think. These are our lives to live, Harvey’s and mine, not theirs or yourn. We don’t go around tellin’ them what to do and they shouldn’t be tellin’ us.”
“But, Liv, be reasonable. Marriage is normal. It’s what God intends for us.”
“Now I’ve seen plenty of bad marriages, Amos Whitlatch, and I’ll just bet you have too in your line of work. If Harvey and I are happy with each other and a comfort to each other just as we are, what’s that to your wife or to the other church women? Or to you? Or to God, for that matter?”
Amos shook his head. He had known before he came that this would be a difficult counseling. Now he looked out at the road as the Kellermans’ farm truck went by. One of the Kellerman boys leaned out the window, laughing, and waved to them. Nearly everyone waved to Livia, at least the men and boys. Both Amos and Livia waved back.
“I like those boys. The Kellermans are good people,” Livia said, knowing that it would irritate Amos, since the Kellermans were Catholics.
“I can see that we’re not goin’ to reach an agreement today, Liv,” Amos said slowly, still gazing out at the road where the dust was slowly settling back into place. “So, I guess I’d better go now, but if you change your mind, just remember—I’m not your enemy and neither is God. And we’re both of us just up the road from you.” He gestured toward the dust-coated Temple of Mercy in the distance. “When you’re ready for us, we’re ready for you.”
With that, Amos drained the last of the lemonade in his glass, smacked his lips at its tartness, and thanked Livia, saying how refreshing the drink had been. Handing her his empty glass, he walked toward his Ford. “Good-bye, Liv,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, “and God bless…both you and Harvey.”
Livia waved to him, her anger spent now, for she was always sorry when people left her, often feeling she’d driven them away with her fierce attitudes, attitudes which she knew she couldn’t control. She sat for a while after Amos drove off, finishing her own lemonade. Satan jumped back into her lap. She scratched his neck and rocked a bit, while he purred, and the old rocker complained with squeaks at every movement.
Then suddenly she rose, sending Satan flying. She picked up the pitcher, pressed the glasses against her stomach with one arm, and entered the house. After returning the pitcher to the ice box and placing the glasses in the kitchen sink, she scooped up Tiny, who had finally stopped barking, and sat down in her indoor rocker with the Chihuahua, contended now, in her lap. She looked at Harvey’s empty recliner next to her. Then she took a tissue from her apron pocket, and then another, and into them she wept.
He looked at the house that was also the Zion Ridge Post Office; a weathered sign over the porch entrance said so. A story and one-half high, the farmhouse had a metal roof troubled by vast patches of rust. An aged, faded red chimney, blackened along the top but idle on this hot summer day, rose up from the middle of the roof. The roof itself slanted steeply toward the road before its pitch leveled out considerably above the porch. The porch sat little more than the width of a floor joist above the ground and was reached by a large steppingstone with an uneven surface that often-held ice in the winter. The ladies of the church had declared this stone a purely deliberate trip hazard.
Despite its many imperfections, the house had withstood the vicissitudes of West Virginia weather for more than eighty years. Now the whole thing was just shy of dilapidation. Only thinning vestiges of white paint peeked out here and there from crevices in the wood siding. Otherwise, the house was weathered to a dull grey.
Along its right side was a smaller porch with a sagging floor, due no doubt to a rotting joist or two. There, Amos saw a black cat curled into a ball, snug against a galvanized wash tub. In the yard chickens clucked, cackled, pecked, and strutted. A few steps from the side porch was a cistern, topped with a cast iron hand pump.
Having heard the car stop, Livia was already standing on the front porch, her arms crossed, looking hard in Preacher Whitlach’s direction. “Howdee, Amos!” she called to him and waved with exaggerated neighborliness as he walked toward her, for she loved to have visitors, even though she was wary of this one. “What brings you here?” She never called him Preacher as all the other people on Zion Ridge would do. She had known him as a feral teenager and just couldn’t adjust to the reality of his having grown up and become a Man of God.
“Thought I’d come visit for a bit, Liv, if that’s all right,” he replied, stepping up on the porch without tripping on the cursèd stone. “Haven’t seen you for such a long while. How have you been?”
“Fine,” she replied. Though still suspicious of his real motives, she asked, “Want some lemonade? I made some fresh this mornin’, figurin’ it would be another hot day. Got it in the ice box. Plenty cold by now.”
“Lemonade would be just dandy, Liv, it really would. Could we have it here on the porch, though? There is a bit of breeze come up from the river, and maybe some rain on the way, too.”
“Well, I hope so. My cistern’s nearly gone dry.” Then she added, “Yeah, sure, we can have it here.”
Livia entered the house, letting the screen door bang close behind her, stirring up a small cloud of flies which had hoped to follow her inside. Amos could hear Livia’s footsteps crossing the wooden floor of the post office-parlor, heading toward the kitchen at the back of the house. Her infamous Chihuahua, Tiny, was yipping madly as she went.
Amos seated himself on the porch swing, thinking its motion might cool him on this humid day. Besides, he knew that Livia always sat in one of the two wooden rockers she kept on the porch. The only other chair was reserved for Harvey, who today was miles away, slung over the Monongahela River near Pittsburgh, most likely driving rivets into a bridge support as part of a repair project.
As Amos made himself comfortable, he saw the black cat again, wide awake now, hopping onto the far end of the porch. It seemed so much larger than before and displayed an extraordinary suppleness, even for a cat. Unlike Livia’s other cats, tattered and torn as they were, this one was sleek and comely, as though it were brushed and groomed daily. Its dense black fur seemed iridescent in the sunlight. Stopping beside Livia’s rocker and sitting back on its haunches, the cat stared at Amos with bright golden eyes, eyes that glowed with danger and cunning and some unknowable, unearthly power—immense and ominous it seemed to Amos.
Livia returned with a large round glass pitcher filled with lemonade. She carried it in one hand and two plain drinking glasses in the other. Thin slices of lemon swam in the pitcher and some ice cubes clinked against its sides. Livia turned and pushed the screen door open with her hip. She backed onto the porch with a motion that somehow she made graceful, all the while yelling mild curses at Tiny, who, though still out of sight, was determined to escape the house, bite the preacher’s ankles, and thus confirm local opinion that he was a dog from some torrid Mexican hell.
“Here, hold yer glass out,” Livia instructed Amos after giving him one of the drinking glasses. “The dog’ll shut up soon. Don’t worry about him.” She poured lemonade into Amos’s glass and then into hers. Taking a quick sip as she moved, Livia seated herself in her rocker before placing the pitcher beside her on the dusty porch floor. The black cat looked at her and then at Amos before leaping with a single swift motion into Livia’s lap. She had just enough time to move her glass out of the way before the cat nestled into the folds of her gingham apron. There it resumed staring at Amos.
Amos tasted the lemonade and puckered a bit at its tartness before saying, “That’s a beautiful cat, Liv.” He was truly surprised at its grooming, for of all the stories that swirled around Zion Ridge concerning Livia, and there were many, none, not even ones about Harvey, were more persistent than those tales concerning her barn full of partially dismembered cats—cats which preyed on one another, fought for the very delight and devilment of torturing and killing their own kind, since they had long ago eaten every rodent and bird within a mile of the barn. Cats, they were, with missing eyes and ears, cats that limped and groaned with pain and grief, cats with oozing wounds and bleeding eyes, cats reputed to carry off small dogs, rabbits, gerbils, and other pets from the surrounding farms, snatching them at times from within their homes and dragging them into this barn of horrors where they were harried to death, slowly, since cats always deny their prey the dignity of sudden death. With the coming of each dusk, their feline cries and howls and shrieks issued from the barn as they might from a pack of demons in some ritual dance, cries that canceled the softer sounds of whippoorwills and great horned owls in the woods about Zion Ridge. The cats, people said, had formed their own cult and now were beholden to no one, not even Livia. They, like the Chihuahua, were actually the Devil’s own creatures.
“Thanks,” said Livia. “Yes, he’s my favorite of all the cats ‘round here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Why, his name’s S…,” Livia caught herself, just in time to change “Satan” to “Sam.” She thought for a moment about whether lying to a preacher is a mortal sin but quickly decided that it couldn’t be, given the track records of most preachers she knew. Satan sat up in Livia’s lap at the sound of the strange name and looked into her face with a puzzled expression, as if to say, “Who the hell is Sam?”
“That’s a mighty plain name for such an elegant cat,” Amos noted. “Why, he looks like a small panther instead of a normal cat.”
Livia smiled. “That just what he thinks he is—or more.” She sipped at her lemonade again to clear her throat, for she had decided that now was the time to start in on Amos. “But I bet you didn’t come here to talk to me about cats, now did you?”
“Well no, I didn’t.” No matter how well people knew Livia, they were rarely prepared for her bluntness.
“Then why are you here? The post office is closed for the day. Can’t sell you no stamps, even if I wanted to.”
“Oh, I don’t need stamps or anything to do with the mail.”
“That’s right. I know you don’t, ‘cause I gave your mail to the carrier for your route this morning, so you got it already. You’re here for some other reason. Now what is it?”
“Well, Liv, this is a hard matter to broach.”
“Broach? Is that some preacher word you learned? Just spit it out, Amos. What is it?”
“Well, Liv, it’s that some people don’t approve of you being postmistress anymore.”
“And what is it they don’t like, as if I didn’t already know.” Livia had many sympathetic informers all around Zion Ridge.
“Well, there’s several things. First, they’re afraid of your dog, Tiny. You have to admit that he’s a might feisty. And likes to nip an ankle or two when he gets a chance.”
“I already took care of that and discussed it with my boss, the postal inspector in Parkeston. When the post office is open, I keep Tiny in the kitchen behind a gate. That dog can’t get out no way. Besides, how people could be so scared of such a little dog is beyond me. So that’s not it. Now what is, really?”
“Well…there’s Harvey, too.”
“Harvey! Hell, he don’t bite anybody. An’ I’m damn sure not goin’ to keep him behind a gate, if that’s what you’re goin’ for. Fact is, there’s not a kinder man in this whole county than Harvey Satterfield and I’ll pull the hair outta anyone who says different, preacher or not!”
“Now take it easy, Liv. It’s not me asayin’ this.”
“No, it’s them damn hypocrite women in your church asayin’ it! That’s who it is! And you know I’m right.”
“Well yes, it is our church women.”
“See, I knew it!”
“But you got to look at it their way, too, Liv. They’re good Christian women just tryin’ to live by their faith.”
“And how am I astoppin’ ‘em? Just answer me that!”
“Well, to their way of thinkin’, your house is a sinful place ‘cause you let Harvey stay here without bein’ married to him, yet this is where they have to come for their postal service. People see Harvey goin’ up the road from here real late at night sometimes, and that don’t seem right to ‘em.”
“I suppose they do see him. And if they’d git up early enough, sometimes they might see him slippin’ up the road then, four or five or six in the morning, if they’ve a mind to look. Sometimes he don’t even go up the road at all, if you really want to know the whole truth. But what of it? Nothin’ we’re ashamed of, I can tell you that. And nothin’ that’s anybody else’s business! It’s mine and his’n and no one else’s, not even yours, Amos Whitlatch.”
“No, maybe not mine directly, but it is God’s business to look over all of us and judge us in the end for what we do.”
“Then some of them ole biddies that’s apointin’ their fingers at me are in for a whole lot of trouble, I can tell you that, preacher man, if that’s the game you want to play.” Livia was leaning forward now, looking as though she were about to leap from her rocker. Even Satan was disturbed enough to jump down from her lap and sit beside her again, yet ever alert to encourage a fight, just as he liked to do with the barn cats.
Amos set his glass of lemonade on a nearby windowsill, the better to fend off Livia’s attacks. “They’re just concerned, Liv,” he continued, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, “concerned about the message all this conveys to the young people in our community. We don’t want them growin’ up thinkin’ that marriage is . . . well, optional. That’s not God’s plan for us.”
“Well, since your bringin’ that up, just what is God’s plan for us? Was it His plan to take my daddy away from me and my brother and our mother, leaving us with next to nothin’ to live on after he died? Was it His plan to make my mother have to work in a factory and leave us kids alone all day with just a neighbor woman or two good enough to check on us? Was it His plan to make me leave school in eighth grade and go to work making cardboard boxes so we could have something to eat and clothes to wear, but with no chance ever again for me to learn anything? So just go on and tell me about them high kaflootin’ plans God’s got for us, ‘cause I’d really like to know.”
“We all face hard times, Liv. That ain’t nothin’ new, nor is it somethin’ that hit only your family. Plenty of folks around here have had it even worse that you, but God brought you through it all. Now you got a nice job and a home of your own.”
“You’re damn right I do because I fought for them. Nobody give ‘em to me. Now some people—your wife included—and don’t think I don’t know this—want to take it all away from me ‘cause they think that cause they go to church and I don’t that they’re better than me. Ain’t that it, when you get right down to it?”
Amos shook his head but had no chance to reply.
“Well, they may think they’re better, but by heavens they’re not!”
“No, now wait, Liv, I don’t think that’s it. When I say God’s plan for us, I mean He intends for us to live by His law. In this case, why don’t you and Harvey just git married? You obviously love each other and belong together. And have for a long time. Why, marriage would solve the whole problem. And I’d be glad to do the service for you—in private, if you like. Nobody’s got a problem with you two bein’ together—as long as you’re married.”
“So, because some women who don’t even really know us want to bitch and complain, we’re supposed to git married! Well, they can go to hell and you can lead the parade, if that’s what you think. These are our lives to live, Harvey’s and mine, not theirs or yourn. We don’t go around tellin’ them what to do and they shouldn’t be tellin’ us.”
“But, Liv, be reasonable. Marriage is normal. It’s what God intends for us.”
“Now I’ve seen plenty of bad marriages, Amos Whitlatch, and I’ll just bet you have too in your line of work. If Harvey and I are happy with each other and a comfort to each other just as we are, what’s that to your wife or to the other church women? Or to you? Or to God, for that matter?”
Amos shook his head. He had known before he came that this would be a difficult counseling. Now he looked out at the road as the Kellermans’ farm truck went by. One of the Kellerman boys leaned out the window, laughing, and waved to them. Nearly everyone waved to Livia, at least the men and boys. Both Amos and Livia waved back.
“I like those boys. The Kellermans are good people,” Livia said, knowing that it would irritate Amos, since the Kellermans were Catholics.
“I can see that we’re not goin’ to reach an agreement today, Liv,” Amos said slowly, still gazing out at the road where the dust was slowly settling back into place. “So, I guess I’d better go now, but if you change your mind, just remember—I’m not your enemy and neither is God. And we’re both of us just up the road from you.” He gestured toward the dust-coated Temple of Mercy in the distance. “When you’re ready for us, we’re ready for you.”
With that, Amos drained the last of the lemonade in his glass, smacked his lips at its tartness, and thanked Livia, saying how refreshing the drink had been. Handing her his empty glass, he walked toward his Ford. “Good-bye, Liv,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, “and God bless…both you and Harvey.”
Livia waved to him, her anger spent now, for she was always sorry when people left her, often feeling she’d driven them away with her fierce attitudes, attitudes which she knew she couldn’t control. She sat for a while after Amos drove off, finishing her own lemonade. Satan jumped back into her lap. She scratched his neck and rocked a bit, while he purred, and the old rocker complained with squeaks at every movement.
Then suddenly she rose, sending Satan flying. She picked up the pitcher, pressed the glasses against her stomach with one arm, and entered the house. After returning the pitcher to the ice box and placing the glasses in the kitchen sink, she scooped up Tiny, who had finally stopped barking, and sat down in her indoor rocker with the Chihuahua, contended now, in her lap. She looked at Harvey’s empty recliner next to her. Then she took a tissue from her apron pocket, and then another, and into them she wept.
Carl Parsons, a former manufacturing manager for TRW Automotive, has had a secondary career as a college instructor of rhetoric and literature. Now retired, he serves as a Master Gardener for the University of Tennessee Extension office and contributes essays on botanical subjects to Hey, Smokies! (an online travel magazine). He has also served as an associate editor for Heater, a crime fiction magazine, and has had fiction published with Spillwords Press and Foundling House, and poetry with Literary Yard and Plum Tree Tavern. Born in Parkersburg, WV, he now resides in Kodak, TN.