Bobbie Ann Mason - Shiloh and Other Stories

2001 Modern Library Edition

Copyright 1982 by Bobbie Ann Mason

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

M ODERN L IBRARY and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in 1982 by Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. This edition is published by arrangement with the author.

constitutes a continuation of this copyright page.

Shiloh, Offerings, Nancy Culpepper, and Third Monday appeared originally in The New Yorker. Detroit Skyline, 1949, A New-Wave Format, Drawing Names, and The Retreat appeared originally in Atlantic Monthly. Still Life with Watermelon first appeared in Redbook. Old Things first appeared in somewhat different form in The North American Review. The Climber first appeared in the Washington Post Magazine. Residents and Transients first appeared in New Boston Review. The Ocean first appeared in somewhat different form in Bloodroot under the title Recreation. Graveyard Day first appeared in somewhat different form in Ascent.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Mason, Bobbie Ann.
Shiloh and other stories / Bobbie Ann Mason.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-80632-1
1. KentuckySocial life and customsFiction. I. Title.
PS3563.A7877 S49 2001
813.54dc21 2001019418

Modern Library website address: www.modernlibrary.com

v3.1

F OR R OGER

Leroy Moffitts wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals. She lifts three-pound dumbbells to warm up, then progresses to a twenty-pound barbell. Standing with her legs apart, she reminds Leroy of Wonder Woman.

Id give anything if I could just get these muscles to where theyre real hard, says Norma Jean. Feel this arm. Its not as hard as the other one.

Thats cause youre right-handed, says Leroy, dodging as she swings the barbell in an arc.

Do you think so?

Sure.

Leroy is a truckdriver. He injured his leg in a highway accident four months ago, and his physical therapy, which involves weights and a pulley, prompted Norma Jean to try building herself up. Now she is attending a body-building class. Leroy has been collecting temporary disability since his tractor-trailer jackknifed in Missouri, badly twisting his left leg in its socket. He has a steel pin in his hip. He will probably not be able to drive his rig again. It sits in the backyard, like a gigantic bird that has flown home to roost. Leroy has been home in Kentucky for three months, and his leg is almost healed, but the accident frightened him and he does not want to drive any more long hauls. He is not sure what to do next. In the meantime, he makes things from craft kits. He started by building a miniature log cabin from notched Popsicle sticks. He varnished it and placed it on the TV set, where it remains. It reminds him of a rustic Nativity scene. Then he tried string art (sailing ships on black velvet), a macram owl kit, a snap-together B-17 Flying Fortress, and a lamp made out of a model truck, with a light fixture screwed in the top of the cab. At first the kits were diversions, something to kill time, but now he is thinking about building a full-scale log house from a kit. It would be considerably cheaper than building a regular house, and besides, Leroy has grown to appreciate how things are put together. He has begun to realize that in all the years he was on the road he never took time to examine anything. He was always flying past scenery.

They wont let you build a log cabin in any of the new subdivisions, Norma Jean tells him.

They will if I tell them its for you, he says, teasing her. Ever since they were married, he has promised Norma Jean he would build her a new home one day. They have always rented, and the house they live in is small and nondescript. It does not even feel like a home, Leroy realizes now.

Norma Jean works at the Rexall drugstore, and she has acquired an amazing amount of information about cosmetics. When she explains to Leroy the three stages of complexion care, involving creams, toners, and moisturizers, he thinks happily of other petroleum productsaxle grease, diesel fuel. This is a connection between him and Norma Jean. Since he has been home, he has felt unusually tender about his wife and guilty over his long absences. But he cant tell what she feels about him. Norma Jean has never complained about his traveling; she has never made hurt remarks, like calling his truck a widow-maker. He is reasonably certain she has been faithful to him, but he wishes she would celebrate his permanent homecoming more happily. Norma Jean is often startled to find Leroy at home, and he thinks she seems a little disappointed about it. Perhaps he reminds her too much of the early days of their marriage, before he went on the road. They had a child who died as an infant, years ago. They never speak about their memories of Randy, which have almost faded, but now that Leroy is home all the time, they sometimes feel awkward around each other, and Leroy wonders if one of them should mention the child. He has the feeling that they are waking up out of a dream togetherthat they must create a new marriage, start afresh. They are lucky they are still married. Leroy has read that for most people losing a child destroys the marriageor else he heard this on Donahue. He cant always remember where he learns things anymore.

At Christmas, Leroy bought an electric organ for Norma Jean. She used to play the piano when she was in high school. It dont leave you, she told him once. Its like riding a bicycle.

The new instrument had so many keys and buttons that she was bewildered by it at first. She touched the keys tentatively, pushed some buttons, then pecked out Chopsticks. It came out in an amplified fox-trot rhythm, with marimba sounds.

Its an orchestra! she cried.

The organ had a pecan-look finish and eighteen preset chords, with optional flute, violin, trumpet, clarinet, and banjo accompaniments. Norma Jean mastered the organ almost immediately. At first she played Christmas songs. Then she bought The Sixties Songbook and learned every tune in it, adding variations to each with the rows of brightly colored buttons.

I didnt like these old songs back then, she said. But I have this crazy feeling I missed something.

You didnt miss a thing, said Leroy.

Leroy likes to lie on the couch and smoke a joint and listen to Norma Jean play Cant Take My Eyes Off You and Ill Be Back. He is back again. After fifteen years on the road, he is finally settling down with the woman he loves. She is still pretty. Her skin is flawless. Her frosted curls resemble pencil trimmings.

Now that Leroy has come home to stay, he notices how much the town has changed. Subdivisions are spreading across western Kentucky like an oil slick. The sign at the edge of town says Pop: 11,500only seven hundred more than it said twenty years before. Leroy cant figure out who is living in all the new houses. The farmers who used to gather around the courthouse square on Saturday afternoons to play checkers and spit tobacco juice have gone. It has been years since Leroy has thought about the farmers, and they have disappeared without his noticing.