The Scent of Wax Flowers

[If you wish to print this story to read, click here for the Google Doc. Otherwise, keep scrolling...]

Naaman, with Miss Bettie riding in the back, drove up to Leland’s mother’s house and honked. Miss Bettie said, “He knows we’re coming, Naaman, honk again.” Her impatient tone of voice, lost on stone-deaf Naaman, implied that Leland had oughta been standing on the stoop awaiting her arrival. For one thing Leland knew that his aunt on his father’s side did not call on his mother, never had, never would. When his father had been alive, she had gone to his office to discuss their investments and other business connected with the property they had inherited jointly from their father.

On Thanksgiving and Christmas and on Leland’s birthday, which was the same as her own, Leland’s mother and father (with him the only chick they had) drove to the family place, which was where Miss Bettie lived from birth to the present, scusing those years she spent at college. Naaman would serve the meal with the elegance and dignified silence of a butler. Often Miss Bettie and Naaman drove downtown and watched the market close; then they cut across town and enjoyed a bar-b-que lunch in the car. She was seldom seen walking for any reason. She was not one of those women like Leland’s mother who enjoys stopping to talk in the grocery store. If she needed a spool of thread she sent Naaman with a note and she ordered her groceries over the telephone.

Since her brother’s death a year ago, no one had questioned her position as head of the family. She didn’t expect Leland to; but since he couldn’t help being his mother’s child, she wanted to make certain things clear. She had been studying how do it off and on since Christmas; and when she read in the paper that his mama expected him home for the spring holidays, she sent word by Naaman that she would pick him up today and carry him out to see some of the timber she held title to and that likely enough he would someday hold title to since she was willing to go when the Lord called her and there were no other heirs.

Naaman knew what went on in Miss Bettie’s mind by a kind of mental telepathy sharpened by their long years of association and because when she wanted him to do some particular thing, she stomped her foot until the vibrations reached him. Staccato. He honked again.

Leland almost tripped over the silver-headed cane his mama had thrust in his hand as he was starting out the door after the first honk. That’s what had kept him from being on the front stoop where he knew Miss Bettie would want him to be, his mama holding him back until she could lay her hand on the cane. He hardly had the least idea how to carry a silver-headed cane. It was like holding a baseball bat dangling in your hand. He almost fell over it getting into his seat. Miss Bettie didn’t say a word at first about the cane because she knew very well who had put him up to bringing it. If snakes in the timber were what he was scared of he had oughta brought an ordinary forked stick. She could show him herself how to make one.

“Good afternoon, Aunt Bettie,” Leland said. “It’s a perfect day for going to the country.”

“Good afternoon, Leland,” she said. “That can you’re carrying was given to your grandfather by his Sunday School class after he’d been their leader for fifteen years, but he never carried it to the country. I don’t know what your mama was thinking of.” “No’am,” he said, not knowing what he meant by it, but thinking he should respond and thinking if he meant anything, it was that he also didn’t know what his mama was thinking of when she wouldn’t let him out of the house until she found the cane. “You mean it’s more ceremonial than functional,” he said after a moment’s pause.

Naaman had spotted the cane right off and figured that Leland thought there might be a snake in the grass. He could smell when a person was scared of snakes. Probably Leland’s mama had brought up the possible hazard; and when Leland had looked like he would refuse the invitation to view his future inheritance, she had come up with the cane idea. Naaman had seen too many quail hens dragging a wing across the road trying to save their young’uns to hold much store by female notions. His own mama had put wooden matches in her corn rows to cure the headache, but she had died anyway. Miss Bettie didn’t count, having no chick of her own and too late now to think of it. She didn’t hold with foolishness, never batted an eye if a black cat run in front of the car, never worried about nothing but the market.

Leland had the feeling climbing into Aunt Bettie’s car something like he had when he started first grade. His mama had sent a note with him to give the teacher. The teacher opened it and read aloud, “Leland has perfect pitch.” She snickered behind her hand and lined him up with the girls. It took Leland twelve years to work himself free.

Miss Bettie stared straight at the front door; but she didn’t look to see Leland’s mother, who stayed on her side of the screen while Leland was walking down the front path trying to decide which way to hold the cane, under his arm or swinging lightly. They sat in the same pew at church every Sunday, rain or shine, leaving the space between them that Leland’s father had occupied until his death. They hadn’t spoken then either, more than they could help; but it hadn’t been noticeable because of the gracious way he treated each. Proudly he had walked between them, unwilling to break the rule of evenhandedness that as brother, husband, and Judge of Superior Court he was well known for. Leland thought how sweet to be born profoundly deaf. Peaceful. He wished with all his heart he could palm off the cane to Naaman, but the Sunday School class had engraved three initials on the silver knob and not one of them a “T”.

Tillman was Naaman’s family name and that’s what his pa had done, tilled the soil; but it was a poor way for keeping body and soul together and his ma, when Naaman was six years old, had started coming to town to do day work. The school had said there was nothing they could learn Naaman; and if she didn’t want him to go to the School for the Deaf in Raleigh, she could keep him at home. Sometimes the Welfare will shake a family apart sending one here and another there, but Miss Bettie told his ma to bring him to her and the Welfare knew better than to say anything against it. Miss Bettie, who had studied to be a teacher although she had never asked for a job, had held Naaman in her lap and learned him with flashcards. When she had other things to do and his mama was busy in the kitchen, Naaman would slip into the parlor and not make a sound. Shut off from cooking odors by solid oak doors, the parlor was a museum of preserved scents. Ivory piano keys, a horsehair sofa, knotted and plaited human hair wreaths, real silk throws, a two-prong deer head—the room was close as Naaman ever need be to a zoo. He never sat on the horsehair soda or pressed down on the piano keys but he would slip his finger over them and draw out their scents. Then he would stand by the glass-enclosed bouquet of wax flowers composed by Miss Bettie’s own hand, enjoying their faint fragrance, like the vibrations when Miss Bettie stomped, attuned through the whole body rather than the nose alone.

“Chinese would be an easier language to teach a deaf child,” Miss Bettie wrote in her diary, “but Naaman is a bright youngster and I expect to be successful with him.” She had thought at one time she could also teach him to speak, but gave up on that when the sounds she coaxed from his were rasping, unSouthern. When it was time for him to take the driver’s test, she went along and made sure he passed.

Leland climbed in beside Aunt Bettie and Naaman started up as soon as she stomped. “I’m going to show you some first-class timberland.” She put her hand on Leland’s arm. “You look like your Daddy did before he married. When you’re off at that school, I want you to have something to think about. Those trees have been there since your Grandaddy put in the seedlings. Daddy helped him.”

Leland tried to think of his Daddy putting in seedlings. He tried to think of his Daddy before he married Mama. Leland couldn’t do it.

They drove five miles into the country, past the old cotton gin that was boarded up and past the road that led to the river and was called the Cason’s Old Field Ferry Road.

“It’s very historical through here,” Leland said.

“You can’t eat history,” Aunt Bettie said and stomped for Naaman to turn off the highway.

They went onto the worst road Leland could remember in his whole life. There must have been heavy trucks driving back and forth in here for Lord knows how long with the road muddy and then the weather took a turn to dry up leaving grooves clear to the hub cap. He couldn’t think why heavy trucks would be going back into Aunt Bettie’s timber, but maybe there was some new road cut through he hadn’t heard of.

“The beauty—land—here—quiet,” Aunt Bettie said, the words jolted out and some lost entirely as the car lunged from one side to the other. Leland was glad it was Naaman doing the driving.

Naaman could see Miss Bettie’s mouth moving and he wished he knew what she was telling. He had carried her back and forth to the lumber yard, and he had seen the extreme satisfaction on her face when she had closed the deal, held out her doe-skin gloved hand for the money to be counted into. Cut timber, no matter how much of it there was, didn’t seem pleasure enough to be bringing her legal heir to view.

When they came to the turn in the road that led to the section where the lumber yard people had put in stakes and tied markers to the mature trees, Miss Bettie stomped. Naaman pulled in at an old cabin nobody had lived in for a long time and parked side of a Chinaberry tree.

Leland made up a poem on the spot: “The Chinaberry tree drops pearls / That dry and wither as the girls.” He said it to himself twice, three times. It had a Housman sound. He looked to Miss Bettie to see how he could politely help her out of the car and wondered by Naaman had driven slam up to the Chinaberry tree. It wasn’t his place to tell Naaman to re-park the car and he didn’t know how he would do it if it were. He didn’t want to hop out of the car acting greedy and he didn’t want to act ungrateful either. “She’s your Daddy’s sister, son,” his mama said. “And you’re her only heir.”

He stood beside Naaman holding the car door, waiting for her to follow; she didn’t move. “Go on. You and Naaman. I’ll honk if I need you.” She took the Wallstreet Journal from her reticule and began to peel an orange.

Leland followed Naaman down the road and around the curve. There was the land all right but the timber was gone—clean gone. Leland looked at Naaman and swore. He strode into the forest of stumps, hitting at the grass. He hit at some of the stumps too; he bent close to see if the sap was still oozing and he couldn’t tell; but he could hear the snakes. He climbed up on a stump like he wanted to take a better look all around, but then he started leaping from one to the other until he got back to the road without touching the ground.

Naaman followed along laughing (not at Leland’s misfortune; he’d suffered enough of Miss Bettie’s eccentricities to think this was a joke; but at the wonderful sight of a grown man leaping stump to stump.) Leland was a regular high jumper and Naaman knew that was a talent not easily come by. He wished he had a way to catch the sight of Leland leaping.

Miss Bettie looked up from her paper. “Do you think that timber’ll bring us a fair price, Leland? Give a guess what it’ll bring.”

Leland shook his head. “Looks like it’s been cut and sold already, Aunt Bettie.” Was it possible she didn’t know? Could bandits have stolen the tinder?

She frowned and turned to Naaman. “I say it’s a fine stand of timber; but if you don’t want it, I can find somebody who does.” Leland sat down, put his hands over his ears and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. If the timber hadn’t been cut, why would there be so much grass growing between the stumps and so many snakes slithering all over.

Naaman had his fingers on the ignition key, flicking it back and forth. He wondered if his Mama had let him go to the School for the Deaf if they would have taught him how to use a camera.

“I do believe that you are turning up your nose at a nice present, Leland; that timber would pay your way to law school with some over.”

“I guess the sun was in my eyes, Aunt Bettie,” Leland said, feeling speech return to him like pain when novacaine wears off. “I’ll go take a better look.” He poked the silver-headed cane at Naaman to hold, who sat back in his seat and watched Leland going along the rutted road with his coat held on his arm and the dust rising up around his trousers like clouds so thick they might have lifted him off the ground.

Miss Bettie slumped back, snoring gently, her stomping foot quiet.

Naaman, of course, didn’t hear a sound when Leland hollered that a snake had got him; but when he came limping back and fell against the car, Naaman pulled him in and headed for home like Satan was after him. They stopped off at the first house they came to and got the leg opened in time and Leland was all right though he didn’t enjoy the rest of his vacation very much. Miss Bettie pulled his head down on her lap and stroked his forehead with her soft, ungloved hand all the way back to town. Each stroke brought forth the faint fragrance of wax flowers, though Leland knew it was, in fact, the orange she had peeled. When Leland went back to school he tried to think of himself as a pauper. He thought he could easily become one. Just make one false move. He got out his copy of The Cherry Orchard and cried as he read the final scene. He puzzled as to whether if Naaman were there watching the trees fall, but hearing nothing, would there be any noise. His roommate, a Communications major, hee-hawed. “Suppose Naaman carried a tape recorder with him and recorded the crash, would that count?” Leland decided right then that he would change his major to Religious Studies. It broke his mama’s heart when he became a Buddhist, but Miss Bettie knew she had got her own back. When he had his head shaved, he brought her the long locks and she plaited and twisted them into a flowery wreath that she hung next to the one she had made from his daddy’s baby curls.

Naaman, driving the nail to hang this second wreath of hair, thought of his mama plaiting her corn rows and sticking kitchen matches close to the scalp to ward off the headache and his own head ached more and more every day. He began to nip at the bottle until he wasn’t fit to drive.

[Undated story by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Slightly edited by Sonya Mann for readability.]