Love and Lament Read online

  “Well?” Flora said, “Did you make passionate love?”

  “Psssh, Flora.” Then, in a serious voice she said, “I told him he better take care of himself.”

  “He’s not that kind, Mary Bet. He’ll take care of everybody else before he takes care of himself.”

  “I know it,” Mary Bet said. And she thought, if he doesn’t come back, I won’t have to take the risk of marrying him—and losing everything. It’s up to God. “Forgive me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She came over and kissed Flora on the top of her head. “I’m just not feeling well. I’ll go on up.”

  He was five weeks training in Durham, and she went up to see him twice. He wanted her to come again, but she couldn’t bear the sadness when they had to say good-bye, the way he held her and looked at her, that confident smile making her heart flip, tugging at her deep inside. She wrote trying to explain this, and how she was praying for him, but she could never manage to say what she felt because there were things that could only be said face-to-face, not so much in the words but in the way they were said.

  And then he was off to Camp Sevier, outside Greenville, South Carolina, and they wrote to each other once and sometimes twice a week, so that the conversations would get ahead of each other, there was so much they both had to say. Mary Bet’s biggest news came early the next year. “You won’t believe what has just happened,” she wrote. “I don’t think I can myself.”

  Congress had recently passed a law extending the draft age to forty-five, and suddenly millions of men were either in training or on their way. One day Hooper called Mary Bet into his office and told her to take a seat. “You heard about the conscription?” he asked.

  “Miss Mumpford mentioned it. She keeps up with all the news.”

  “I’ve decided to enlist.”

  “What? You’re forty-seven years old.”

  “I don’t feel that old. Do I look it?”

  “No, but—” Mary Bet looked around the office, at the picture of the President and the old governor, at Hooper’s wire baskets of papers, his jacket on the door peg and the tin badge affixed to the lapel, as though for a clue to what she should say. “You can’t just leave us with no sheriff.”

  “I’m not going to, Mary Bet Hartsoe.” And now he smiled at her in a way that made her insides churn—what in the world was he planning on doing? Did he think he could be sheriff of Haw County while running around the woods of South Carolina? “I plan to nominate you to take over while I’m gone.”

  Mary Bet just sat there, staring at Hooper’s smooth walnut desk and thinking, as she often had, how like chocolate it looked. What had he just said to her? He’d let his walrus mustache grow so long it seemed to match the long ends of his string tie.

  “Well?”

  “Well, I’ll have to think on it.”

  “There’s nothing to think about, and no time to. We’re meeting tonight to put it to a vote—just a formality—and you and me are drawing up the papers today.” So he was not kidding her. “You’re up to it, Mary Bet. I’ve never seen a more capable woman, and not many a man either. You know how to get everybody to agree, and you don’t suffer fools—it’s just what we need for a peacemaker. If you change your mind by this evening, we’ll talk about it.”

  “But I haven’t said anything to change it from.”

  Hooper laughed at this. “I like your attitude, Miss Hartsoe, Sheriff Hartsoe. Don’t say anything that you have to unsay later on.”

  “There’s a lot I’d unsay if I could. Hooper, you can’t be serious.”

  “Mary Bet, I was thinking of running for state office anyway, and leaving you in charge for a few months, say, one court term. Now I’ll have to put that off a while. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be gone more than a few months.”

  “But shouldn’t there be an election?”

  “Next fall, next fall. You’ll be fine until then. Nobody’ll misbehave around here too badly, and if they do you’ve got fine deputies in all seven townships. The only dirt you need get on your shoes is from walking to the courthouse.”

  Mary Bet kept shaking her head. “But what about tax collection?”

  “You don’t have to do anything but stay in this office. You’ll have a badge. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep my pistol in your desk.”

  “I won’t shoot it.”

  “Good,” Hooper said, with a little laugh. “It’s just for safety. And you don’t have to go on any raids you don’t care to.”

  “I don’t care to go on any, particularly.” Mary Bet spat a blackberry seed that she’d been working free of her teeth, and she caught the wink her cousin gave her. “I haven’t even said I’ll do it, yet.” One day gave her no time to make such an important decision. But she realized there really was no decision; the sheriff wanted her to do this job and thought she was up to it, and, besides, there was no one other than Hooper Teague whose advice she would care to seek. Robert Gray Jr. was in Hartsoe City and wasn’t up on her daily life; her father, if she called him on the telephone, would only be confused and alarmed. She thought of Leon Thomas, but of course he would only say to do as her cousin recommended.

  “Look at it this way,” Hooper said, “you’ll be making history—first woman sheriff in the state. Maybe first in the country.”

  Mary Bet sat back. “Pshaw, I didn’t want to make history.”

  “The best don’t.”

  Mary Bet went back to her office, feeling as though she’d just received a piece of bad news. Everything looked different, even Miss Mumpford, who was pulling another page out of her typewriter and crumpling it into the trash can. Mary Bet said, “I’m going to be the sheriff.”

  Miss Mumpford glanced up, squinting behind her glasses as though she couldn’t make out who was talking. “Huh,” she laughed, expelling a lungful of air, then went back to her work.

  Mary Bet felt a smile creasing her cheeks, the prick of tears behind her eyes. “My father always wanted to work in the law,” she said. Miss Mumpford paid no attention.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY in the courthouse, in the presence of Sheriff Teague, Mr. Witherspoon, the three county commissioners, the clerk of the superior court, and a half dozen other men, including the former sheriff, Mary Bet put her hand to the Bible and said, “I, Mary Elizabeth Hartsoe, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

  She knew ahead of time she’d be called on to swear that way and she didn’t care for it, because it seemed a blasphemy to swear to God, even for something so solemn. The gravity of it made her feel woozy, and she wanted to sit down and maybe drink a glass of water and rethink the whole thing. She went on, “I do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to the State of North Carolina, and to the Constitutional powers and authorities which are or may be established for the government thereof; and that I will endeavor to support, maintain, and defend the Constitution of the said State, not inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, to the best of my knowledge and ability, so help me God.”

  Two constitutions to support—it all seemed a little too much, and she had spent the previous night reading them both over carefully. The state constitution didn’t let a person run for office if he denied the being of Almighty God. It shocked her to think anybody would deny God—surely such a person would never be voted in anyway, so what was the point of such an article?

  Finally, she said, “I, Mary Elizabeth Hartsoe, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of Sheriff of Haw County to the best of my knowledge and ability, agreeably to law, and that I will not take, accept, or receive, directly or indirectly, any fee, gift, bribe, gratuity, or reward whatsoever, for returning any man to serve as a juror or for making any false return on any process to be directed, so help me God.”

  She signed the three copies of the document, ones that she herself had typed up earlier in the day, then she went in to say good-bye to Miss Mumpford.
The old lady got to her feet. “Are you the sheriff now?” she asked.

  “I reckon I am.”

  “Well, I’ve seen it all.” Miss Mumpford reached over and shook Mary Bet’s hand. “Are you moving into his office?” She tilted her head.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” Mary Bet said. Then she left the courthouse and headed back to her house to fix supper.

  CHAPTER 24

  1918

  EVERYBODY WANTED TO see the badge, almost, Mary Bet thought, as though they needed proof. She and Flora celebrated that night with a bottle of muscadine wine that Flora had been saving for a special occasion. Flora raised her glass, her thin nose flaring, “I’d like to make a toast. To the first woman sheriff in North Carolina.”

  Mary Bet reddened, feeling the wine’s warmth. She shook her head and said, “There’s nothing to it. Anybody could do it.” But secretly she felt proud of what she’d been asked to do, and she only hoped and prayed she was up to it. Then, before she knew it, she drank an entire glass and felt so light-headed she started to pour herself some more.

  “We might as well,” Flora said. “It won’t keep.”

  “It won’t? Well, I hate to see it go to waste.” She poured herself a half glass, and her friend a full one. They talked and sang, and then they were dancing around their little kitchen, the lantern light swaying and flickering like firelight on the walls. In the morning she awoke with a headache and when she came downstairs and saw the bottle nearly empty, she poured the rest out and threw the bottle in the waste bin.

  Mary Bet started her term with the expectation and fervent hope that nothing much would happen in Haw County until the fall elections. After the first month the routine of sitting at the sheriff’s desk instead of her own had set in. She had to send warrants over for the judge to swear out, then ask one of her deputies—usually Lloyd Everett, because he lived a block away and rarely built houses anymore—to go serve the papers.

  And she had to talk to all the people who stopped in and wanted one thing or another, though most of them just wanted to chat, even after the novelty of having a woman for sheriff had worn off. For the first few weeks there was a lot of ribbing and winking out in the hall, and sometimes right to her face about her being “near ’bout the prettiest sheriff in the state.” Old Thad Utley from Hartsoe City stopped by one day and told her that judging by her looks there should be a law that all future sheriffs wear skirts. She told him that he had no business saying such a thing in the courthouse and if he had nothing more, he should go on and let her get back to work.

  There were those who wanted more than just a look at the first woman sheriff in the state. Some of the requests fell within her jurisdiction, others did not, and she began to have a better appreciation for the kind of work Sheriff Teague had done. One farmer wanted to know what she planned to do about the drought, because his corn and peaches couldn’t survive much longer. A miller came over from Hartsoe to tell her that she ought to enforce the law requiring customers to pay their bills within thirty days, or else get rid of the law altogether the way people ignored it. “I don’t make the laws, Mr. Horne,” she told him. “But if somebody’s not paying up, you can bring ’em to court right here.” He grumbled something about lawyers and left.

  It was in late June, just before her thirty-first birthday, that Mary Bet got a letter from Leon saying he was in England, on his way to France. She didn’t want to think about what danger he was in. Every time she pictured him coming home on the train, leaning out and waving his hat, the image dissolved and she saw the Devil minister in his swallowtail coat leaning for her from his gray horse, and she knew without knowing how that Leon was not coming home.

  He would not be afraid. She prayed instead that he would not suffer; she could not bear to think of him dying alone on some bleak field far away.

  If he and Hooper and the others were willing to go over there and fight, certainly she could do her duty here at home. A string of complaints about petty thefts began coming in. “I can’t find my good hoe,” one disgruntled man told her, just as she was leaving for the day, “and I know exactly where I put it in my shed—same place as always. That hoe cost me a sawbuck.” When Mary Bet asked if he had tried locking the shed, the complainant only stared as though she’d asked if he had tried wearing his pants on his head; he repeated how much he’d paid for the hoe.

  “I left my good linen tablecloth on the line and went out in the afternoon. Pffttt—it was clean gone. What do you make of that?” This grievance from the dried lips of Mrs. Gooch. She seemed to hold Mary Bet accountable, eyeing her with a tilt of her shorn gray head, the way a bird will. “I don’t know what to make of it, Mrs. Gooch,” Mary Bet said. “I’ll get my boys to look into it directly.”

  “You do that then,” Mrs. Gooch said. Then, remembering whom she was speaking to, added, “I thank you for it.” She nodded curtly and left, and Mary Bet felt no particular satisfaction in being recognized for her badge.

  She sat down at Hooper’s desk writing up the latest report, from her old landlady. There had now been nine such complaints in the past three weeks. If the thefts were related, could the thief be taunting her—challenging her authority to act as sheriff? She thought: turn this over to Lloyd Everett, who has far more experience in law enforcement, and let him do what he does best—go snooping around, asking questions. He loved having an excuse to get away from his house and his wife.

  The complaints continued over the summer, and then in the heat of early August, with a sluggish sun melting the sky, the case turned. Mary Bet was walking to work, crossing streets to stay in the shade for the entire four blocks so that she would perspire as little as possible through her layers of undergarments, light cotton shirt, and navy cambric skirt. A colored boy named Willis Ramsey came up to her in the street, his dungarees giving off a faint odor of manure, and said, “Miz Hartsoe, ma’am?”

  “What is it, Willis?” she asked, continuing at a good clip. “I can’t be dawdling.”

  “Well, Mr. Foushee—” Willis curled his little finger into his ear and pulled out something he began examining while walking alongside the sheriff.

  Mary Bet wondered if he was nervous, or just forgetful, or if he maybe had nits. “Well, what about Mr. Foushee?” She edged farther from him, but he just sidled up next to her.

  “I done some work for him, and he axed me ‘bout his pickax, but I tole him, nosir, I don’t know what happen to it. But I seen it two days ago.”

  “Where’d you see it?” Mary Bet asked, afraid she was going to have to get Deputy Everett to haul Willis in for questioning. And then what? Whether he was guilty or not, Judge Lane would send him off to the county reformatory for minors where he’d spend the next year and a half learning how to steal and curse and lie, if he didn’t know already.

  “I seen it in Miz Cantilever’s backyard,” he said. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

  “Mrs. Cadwallader’s?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “What was it doing there?”

  “Just sittin’ there, mindin’ its own bidness, propped on a stump.”

  “And what were you doing there?” Mary Bet slowed down and regarded Willis, his rich brown skin the color of coffee grounds, his rounded boyish cheeks bunching when he smiled at her in a way that he’d learned to do for grown-ups and white folks.

  “I wudn’t doin’ nothin’, ‘cept mindin’ my own bidness, cuttin’ crost the yard to get down to the creek to hunt bait.”

  “How come you’re just now telling somebody about it?”

  “I didn’t take it. I’se afraid if I go tell Mr. Foushee he say I took it. I don’t even want no re-ward, I just want somebody to get that pickax and take it back to Mr. Foushee so he won’t blame me.”

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll look into it.”

  She was thinking about how best to approach Mrs. Cadwallader, a woman who had had some standing in the community as a baker’s wife. But her husband had taken up with another w
oman and moved away to Washington, D.C., leaving a ten-year-old boy and three little girls. One of the girls had died shortly thereafter, of pneumonia. And now the boy was fifteen or sixteen and his mother worked at the garment-label factory south of town, and was never seen at church or anywhere else except the grocery. Mary Bet had never spoken with her. She’d heard the boy had taken to smoking and going on long walks at night, which made her think of Siler.

  Willis was still talking when they got to the veterans’ memorial outside the courthouse. Mary Bet bid him good-bye and hurried on inside. She went through her morning routine, hardly aware of where she was or what she was doing. People came and went, papers were read and sorted through and signed. She still did her own filing because she knew where everything should go; she liked doing it, and didn’t see any need of asking the board to hire an assistant for only a few months.

  At lunchtime she went out to pay a visit to the Cadwallader house.

  It was too hot for walking the half-mile out past the Presbyterian church and the squat houses of white wage earners to the east end of town, so she called for the buggy and driver that were available for her official use. Mrs. Cadwallader had moved to this part of town after her husband left. Her house was a clapboard bungalow with horizontal strips of peeling gray paint above the door, a leaning broken chimney, and a stoop of cracked and chipped cement, weeds encroaching from both sides. Off in an unmown side yard two girls were playing house beside a well and pump that were shared with two or three other neighbors—a common arrangement in this part of town.

  Mary Bet alighted from the buggy, and, lifting her long skirt, climbed the two steps of the front stoop, her heavy black shoes crunching the loose cement. There being no knocker, she rapped on the door and peered around to the closer window. She shielded her eyes and made out a parlor with a rug and rocking chair, perhaps a sofa, piled with what looked like clothes.