Rook Players

Saturday nights in Cherry Gate, North Carolina.  Edna and Clovis sat in their living room, waiting on Jack and Cathern.  The night for a game of Rook.  Every Saturday night at 7:00 PM, Jack and Cathern came to the Barns home to play Rook.  On rare occasions, the Barns went to the Gantt’s for the game.  The game was played most often at the Barns household.  Edna and Clovis sat in chairs opposite each other, Edna folding a piece of paper over and over.  Clovis just sat and stared at nothing in particular.  Occasionally, his hand wandered to his mouth, the back right molar still sore and needing attention.  But he mostly just sat.  Clock said 6:47.  The Gantt’s were notoriously prompt.

At 7:00, they heard a light knock on the door.  Edna looked up, but Clovis was the one to go to the door.  He opened it, and welcomed friends who they had known since childhood, the way it is in the countryside of Lincoln County.  Anybody who stayed there had always been there.  The secrets of their lives were never open stories.  Stories that could be discussed for years.  At the same time, children may never know the reality of their parent’s marriages.

“Come in, Jack.  Hey, Cathern.  How are ya’ll tonight?”

“Fine, fine.  Come to beat you this time.”  Jack stood a head taller than Clovis, and one-half as wide.  Although they were only two years apart in age, Jack had aged much harder.  Cathern’s missing breast taken the year before had taken more of a physical toll on Jack.  His wife had fifty pounds on him, and when one breast disappeared, the other tended to fill in the same spot.  The chemotherapy haunted his cheeks.  But it was his wife who had undergone chemo.

“Yeah, that’s what you’re hopin’.  I’m feeling mighty good tonight.  Think I’ve got my lucky Rook shirt on.”  Clovis patted him on the back, smiled at Cathern, and ushered them in the four feet it took to get to the card table.

“Hey, Edna.  How are ya?”  Cathern smiled, although no teeth appeared to indicate it.  The corners of her mouth turned upward, and her eyes smiled.  But the bottom lip was fat rounded out.  Stick your tongue in your lip and push. That was how she looked.

Cathern leaned, and took a long spit into an old coffee can.  Breast cancer had not deterred her snuff habit.  In fact, she wouldn’t accept that one had anything to do with the other.  In the country, whatever happened to you was fate or God’s will, and what you ate, smoked, or drank had little effect on the outcome of your life.  So spoke Preacher Will on Sunday morning.  It was all part of life, and if you believed it, part of God’s will, that you live and die they way you did.  Pass the fried chicken please.

“Good, good, Cathern.  I’m good.  How’s your mama and daddy this week?”  The information about which she inquired was already news.  In the country, if someone got sick, the news seeped from house to house almost by osmosis.  Although a party line on the phone likely had a good deal to do with it.  Pick up the phone quietly, or better yet, remove the mouthpiece, and you could spend your day listening to your neighbor’s news.  Some people did exactly that.  Having a life in the country was often challenging.  Good news or bad, it was a good possibility that Bill Baker next door knew as soon as you did that your granddaughter was married.  And pregnant.

“They doin’ okay, Edna.  They doin’ okay.  Mama had a flare-up with her stomach this week.  That ol’ ulcer came back to smack her.  Course, she was eatin’ some of them bad peanuts outta her yard,” Cathern chuckled.  “Cain’t be good for her.  But she won’t listen to nobody when she wants them peanuts.”  Edna laughed, too, with a forced kind of mirth that didn’t meet the look in her eyes.  There was a curtain there, not revealing any real feelings she had about Cathern’s mother.  She looked down and then up toward Jack.  He was preparing to sit opposite her.  The two couples played as partners against their spouses.  They had never tried it another way.

“How are ya, Jack?  You get that field plowed today?” Edna looked toward her card partner as he lowered himself into his seat.  The curtain in her eyes was still closed.

“Yeah, Edna.  I did get it done.  There’s some mighty big rocks in that field.  I thought it was gonna tear my damned tractor right up.  But ol’ Bessie made it through.  That field might be dead for this year.  I cain’t tell yet.  But ‘hits done.”  Jack smiled and nodded in Edna’s direction.

“Whose turn is it to deal?”  Clovis was shuffling the cards.  He leaned in the direction of the can and spit a long stream of tobacco juice.  Adjusting it in his cheek, he began shuffling again.

“Think it’s my turn.  Sure of it.  I think it’s my turn,” Cathern repeated herself as she adjusted her weight in the card table chair.  “Ain’t we got any other chairs?  This here one’s not comfortable for me.”

“Let me get you a pillow, Cathern,” Edna stood up.

“I’ll get it,” Jack stood up at the same time.

“No, I’ll get it.  Hits my house,” Edna moved to leave the room, and Jack sat again.  Clovis shuffled, and began dealing the cards.  Nobody said anything while they waited on Edna to return with a pillow.

They played for thirty minutes, with Clovis and Cathern taking most of the hands. Soft insults flew back and forth, mostly between Clovis and Cathern.  Jack and Edna were quiet.  After a series of hands, Jack slapped his hand on the table.

“I think it’s time for a break.  Clovis, you gotta take off that lucky shirt.  Time for us to have some cards come our way.  You marked these things?” The jokes were old and repeated, but there was a careful comfort in the ability to use them.  No thinking required.  Unless it was thinking about which cards to play, what trumps would work, what your partner held in their hands.  Even that required little creative thought.

“Yeah, okay.  Edna, you gonna get the milk and cake?”  Clovis took the deck back and began shuffling again.

“I’ll help you, Edna, “Jack stood up again and moved around the table.  “I need to stretch my legs.”  Edna nodded, and disappeared through the living room door, headed toward the kitchen with Jack following.

Once through the door, he moved rapidly behind her to surround her with his arms.

“Jack!”  She jumped at his touch.

“I gotta touch ya, Edna.  I just gotta.  Sometimes it is so hard to sit there with you, playin’ cards like we don’t do nothing else.  Talkin’ about plowing fields and the cost of cotton.  God, it’s so hard sometimes.”

“Jack!  Jack!”  Edna fought his hug for a moment, and then surrendered to it for just a moment.  “We cain’t do this.  Our spouses are in the room yonder.  We just cain’t. ”

“I gotta, Edna.  I miss you so bad.  I gotta touch you when I can.  Do you know how tired I get of that fat lip of snuff?  I just gotta touch when I can cause I think I’m losin’ my mind.”

“You ain’t, Jack.  You ain’t losing your mind,” Edna held his arms with her own and leaned her head on his shoulder behind her.  “This cain’t happen, Jack.  We chose forty or more years ago. You chose when you were in elementary.  We gotta stick with our choices.”

“Edna.  Just answer me this one question.  I ain’t ever asked it of you before, and I won’t ask it again.  Do you love Clovis?”  Jack got very still and held hard onto Edna.  She shivered, and began pulling his arms off of her.

“What’s love got to do with it?  We have a store, a farm, grown children.  We are country people.  We get married and we stick with it.  There ain’t no room here for love.  I ain’t tellin’ you nothin’ you don’t know.”  She pushed away from him, and he let her go.  She quickly opened the door of the refrigerator, and grabbed a gallon of milk.   Nervous now, she slammed the door.  As the door snapped close, she saw Clovis standing behind it.  Right at the edge of the kitchen door.  He stood very still.  Watching.  Only his eyes moved from Edna to Jack.  His best friend of over fifty years.  Suddenly, he shook hard, a tremor passing through his body.  Edna stepped toward him.

“Rae! Rae! Are you okay?  What is it?”  Clovis had closed his eyes, but as the tremor passed, he slowly opened them.

“Nothin’.  Just came to help.  Let me get the cake, and Jack, you take the dishes.”