A Southern Exposure Read Free Page A

through the bug-spattered windshield, Brett sees that he is pale and upset.
Poets
, she thinks, as she sighs and turns back to face her children.
    “Look, you kids. Daddy feels very bad that he ran over the lady’s pig. He gave her some money to pay for the pig but he still feels very bad. So you kids just be quiet for a while, you hear?”
    Melanctha, who, despite Russ’s theories, does in fact have a sensibility quite similar to his own, a delicacy of spirit, along with his eyes—Melanctha begins to cry, very quietly.
    “Okay, Melly, you come up here with me. You sit on my lap. Darling girl,” her mother croons. “Don’t you fuss. For all we know pigs go to heaven too.”
    “We’ll stop at a tourist court,” says Russ, getting back into the car.
    “Really? I’ve always wanted to, I think they’re, uh, sexy.”
    “Christ, Brett. Your mind. Or maybe we’ll stop at some house. You know, the ones with the lights and little signs on the lawn.”
    “Tourist home. Overnight guests. Well, that’s okay too,” Brett tells him, thinking that it is considerably less than okay: in a tourist court the kids could have their own separate cabin, or maybe two cabins. And she and Russ could be—well, alone, for the first time in months, it seems to her. In the Santa Monica house the bedrooms were all strung out along a balcony, nice sunshine and ocean views but no privacy, none at all, not ever.
    “Ursula.” Russ has said this name musingly, almost romantically.
    “Who?”
    “That was her name, the woman with the pig. Unusual, isn’t it? Wasn’t there an Ursula the Pig Woman in some play? Jacobean, I think. Maybe Johnson.
Bartholomew Fair
?”
    “God, Russ, I don’t know.” Brett is experiencing a terrible and familiar sense of defeat.
    •  •  •
    That night in the large (six bedrooms) farmhouse that is now, in these hard times, a tourist home, Brett sleeps between Melanctha and Lowell, with Walker sprawled near their feet. Fitfully she thinks of home, of Pinehill, and their big spreading-out house. With the children off in their wing. Suppose the Depression got worse, and she and Russ had no money left, would they have to turn their house into a tourist home? Brett doubts it: “I’d rather dig ditches, I’d get me a job with the CCC” is what Russ would undoubtedly say. “No way strange folks are going to be sleeping over at our house.”
    But he seems to enjoy it very much when they stay in those places. Tonight he has spent an hour or so after dinner, down in the living room, making talk with Mr. and Mrs. Williston, their hosts, a plump and red-faced couple (they look much alike), who visibly hang on Russ’s words, his stories. Not to mention all the time spent at the garage discussing their car; the pig had made serious dents in the right front fender, the garage was sending to Topeka for parts. And time visiting Ursula, the pig woman, from whatever play. Russ returns with stories of Ursula’s childhood, her husband’s death (TB), her seven children, all now grown. Her pig. Ursula is a fine brave woman, both Willistons confirm; they have known her always.
    Indeed, Russ has seemed to settle into Kansas. Brett could easily imagine the two or three days becoming a week, and at that she thought, Oh good, I won’t have to go to the Hightowers’ party, and push off those stupid passes from Jimmy, and have those terrifying Hitler conversations with Esther.
    Mostly, though, Brett is haunted by the child, the child who was not there but whom if he or she had been there, walking along with Ursula, instead of the pig, Russ couldhave—he would have killed. Changing everyone’s life entirely. Irrevocably, for good. That nonexistent dead child is much more real to Brett than the vague seven live grownup children that Ursula actually has.
    Instead of a dead child there was a big fender-bending shit-stinking pig.
    Ursula the pig woman. Ursula the pig woman. A play of Depression Kansas. For the Group