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.“I was doing the laundry, in the middle of sorting my coloreds from my whites, when what do I hear but this big booming voice.‘Rita, honey,’ the voice said.‘Obey thy husband and sell the Buick.’ Rachel Ann told me that God only talks to the real pious.Oh, my heart is still beating so fast, Mama, I can hardly talk!” She let go of Mattie then and was on her way back to the door.“Could it have been Henry?” Mattie asked.“Could you have heard Henry Plunkett? After all, he’s the one wanting you to sell the Buick.” But Rita was already halfway out the door.“I gotta put that sign back in the window!” Rita shouted.“Every second it ain’t there dishonors His name.” And then Rachel Ann’s little blue car pulled out of Mattie’s yard and pointed its nose at Watertown.Well, there went any chances of Mattie talking Robbie and Willard into driving her to Bangor in Rita’s Road Hog.And she had thought that she might be able to do just that.Robbie seemed almost wavering when Mattie had asked earlier.And Willard, well, who could tell if Willard was wavering or not, what with all that twitching he did.But now it seemed those chances were squelched, now that God had gone into the used-car business.Mattie was sorry to hear this.How could He keep an eye on Sonny if He was concentrating on Good condition, Tires like new, Will accept best offer?Mattie had just gone back to her packing, thinking that maybe, if she asked again, if she promised something big, the house itself maybe, Marlene would crack and drive her down to Marigold Drive Trailer Park.Or maybe Elmer Fennelson would finally appear from his disappearing act.Elmer would take her for sure, and she would be ready, Lester’s old suitcase packed with a clean brassiere and two clean pairs of bloomers, two dresses, socks, her toothbrush, her big jar of cold cream.She wouldn’t need much.Or if Pauline ever did get off the road with her sacks and boxes of Avon so that she could answer her telephone, maybe Pauline would take her, tired as she was.Someone would take her.Mattie had even thought of calling a taxicab, but where would the nearest taxi service be? Caribou, maybe? It would take him almost two hours to get to Mattagash, and then they would have to turn around and drive another five hours south to get to Sonny.What would that cost? Would the four hundred dollars she had in the bank be enough for that? She thought not.“Not with what things cost these days,” Mattie said.Then she would be broke, no money for a motel room, for food.And her social security check wasn’t due for another two weeks.She stood in the middle of the living room and waited, listened to the sounds of the little house, ticking like a bomb, the quiet of things when one stands alone in one’s own home and thinks.Water in the pipes.A creak in the walls.The grating of the electric furnace.An outside wind.And then silence.And when that silence comes, there’s nothing left to do, no distractions to keep you from facing up to the facts of your situation.There’s just the quiet of the truth, floating all around you like a bad perfume, like the smell of those swamp irises.“I ain’t ever gonna get to Bangor, am I?” Mattie asked aloud.Nothing in the house answered.Somewhere in the distance a car door slammed, probably at Pauline’s house, and the sound of it reached her through the screen of her back door.She could ask Jesus.It wasn’t as if the heavenly ice hadn’t already been broken.After all, his father was on speaking terms with Mattie’s oldest daughter, Rita.She could slide Easter Rising out from under the sofa and ask the kind face in the picture, the one with the sad blue eye and blondish hairs growing like peach fuzz on the boyish chin.“I ain’t ever going to Bangor, am I, Jesus?” she could ask.But she already knew the answer.No need to put one more burden upon the boy’s thin shoulders.She heard the grackles in the backyard and imagined their bluish heads, bobbing.She could almost see the towels she’d hung out on the line yesterday, after that light rain, so much did she want to leave her earthly body and go where the truth wouldn’t find her.But she couldn’t.And then the quiet broke, like a dam, and life rushed down onto her head, wave after wave of helplessness.She would never get to Bangor, Maine.She would never get to Sonny.And that’s when she heard another car in her yard, her peaceful little yard that had been such a nice place before all this trouble.She thought of her tiny square of lawn, where the St.Francis of Assisi birdbath served as a friendly swimming pool for the neighborhood birds.She thought of those sweet bygone days when she and Elmer Fennelson would sit upon her narrow front porch and discuss their lives as though they were books they had once read and then put away on the shelf.She hoped that it might be Rita again, that God had changed His mind and demanded that Rita drive her mother down to Bangor.“Keep the Road Hog, honey,” Mattie could almost hear God advising in a booming voice that only God or Charlton Heston could have.“Put the pedal to the metal, sweetheart.” But it wasn’t Rita.It was Pauline.Mattie opened the door to let her in.She seemed more tired than ever, her big body having a hard time keeping up with her feet.“I know that bubble bath ain’t here yet,” said Mattie.“I just ordered it Monday.And I found my bottle of Skin So Soft this morning
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