Kitty
Cartwright
By Rebekah
(this is a paraody of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway that was
written for E.L. Doctorow’s “Craft of the Novel”
course)
Kitty Cartwright said she would ribbon the tomahawks herself.
For Matilda had her work cut out for her. The targets had to be nailed to the tent posts, sawdust poured over the dirt floor; the men from the sawmill were coming. And then, thought Kitty “Western Regional Tomahawk Champion” Cartwright, what a night—ripe and jittered as if blown from the nostrils of a green broke mare in a corral.
What a rush! What a charge! For it had always seemed to her when, with a cheer from the crowd, which she could hear now, she had burst into the throwing ring, waving her tomahawks in the air, red and green streamers flying around her Stetson. How raging, how pulsating, was the sound of the crowd; like the wind in her ears; the storm against her face; pounding and invigorating and yet (before she galloped away from the stands at night) buoying, long after their applause had ended. And as she stood under the heavy white of the tent ceiling; feeling as she did then, looking out the flaps into the dark fairgrounds, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the cowpokes propping up racing barrels, their wives laying out pies for the bake sale, until Kent said, ‘Hankering for a sliver?’—was that it?—‘I favor rhubarb myself’—was that it? He must have said it one night when she had gone out for air after the competition—Kent Hawkins. He would be back from Monroe one of these days, May or June, she forgot which, for news of him was scarce; it was his presence one remembered; his gait, his rope, his nod, his politeness and, when she had forgotten so much else—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about rhubarb.
She stiffened a little in the ring, waiting for the rodeo clowns to pass. A sweet gal, Missy Horn thought her (knowing her as one does know people who travel with you from town to town); a touch of the horse about her, of the mustang, skittish, unreigned, though she was over thirty, and grown even more wild since her accident. There she stood, never seeing him, waiting for the clowns to pass, impatient.
For having worked the rodeo—how many years now? at least fifteen,--a body feels even in the midst of tent-raising, or caravanning, Kitty was certain, a particular yelp of desire; an indescribable yearning; an ache (but that might be the bones of her arm, affected, they said, by the pins) before the pistol fires. Bang! Off it went. First a shot, clap-like; then the smoke, spiral. The twisting cloud vanished into the stands. What a fool I am, she thought, crossing the ring. God knows why I love it, why I can’t leave it, the banners, the sawdust, the trailers, running up in the stands, chucking my axes at the bull’s-eyes, wrapping myself in the cheers; but even the rodeo clowns, booed by the crowd, kicked by bulls and broncos, drinking themselves to sleep outside their trailers at night could not be any different for the same reason: they love rodeo. In the clapping hands, stamping feet; in the smell of damp woodchips, gunpowder; the horses, bulls, cowboys roping and riding; in the buzz and the crackle and the high pitched screeching of the micro phone which some announcer was testing overhead was what she loved; life; Rodeo; this moment of May.
‘Darn that racket,’ said Old Lady Reese, looking up from her lasso practice and glaring at Kitty as though it were her fault. The same squawk that startled Kitty Cartwright and sent Old Lady Reese’s ropes flailing, came from the speakers and a microphone that had been let to drop in the announcer’s box. Passers-by who, of course, stared and covered their ears, had just time to see a freckled face plunge to retrieve the mic.
Rodeo Clown Number Seven, aged about fifty, pancaked, red mouthed, wearing patched pants and suspenders, with watery eyes that had the look of hopelessness in them which makes complete strangers hopeless too. The world has raised its shriek; where will it descend?
Everything had come to a standstill. The sharpness of the microphone cut through an entire body. Kitty Cartwright looked up at the booth. Everyone looked up at the booth. Number Seven looked. The boy in the booth stood, his face red, the freckles blending into his flush, Number Seven thought, and the blurring of the colors on the boys face terrified him. The world threatened to congeal into one pulsing red color. It is I who am blurring, he thought. Was he not disguised and ignored? So, thought Number Seven, it’s a sign from God. A bugle call to Heaven, signaling the second coming of the Lord! The tears dried out of his eyes.
It’s probably the announcer’s son, thought Kitty Cartwright, turning back to her tomahawks. The sound had stopped but it had left a slight ringing which bounced from the bleachers to the throwing rings to the door that led to the dressing rooms.
‘I have to beat her to the dressing room,’ thought Matilda, seeing Kitty’s eyes trained on the doorway. First she’ll order me around, then she’ll hog the make up and the best outfits and by the time we go on I still won’t be ready.’
‘What are you looking at?’ Kitty Cartwright said to Matilda as she opened the door to the dressing room. The room smelled like hot canvas. Kitty Cartwright sank into her chair, and as Matilda buttoned up her satin shirt and drew on her eyeliner, she felt like a vaudeville dancer who has come backstage and feels the rush of her next cue.
Matilda looked at her through the mirror. ‘Kitty—‘
Kitty
read on the call sheet, ‘Earl says be sure to wave to each corner.’
‘Earl said he won’t back until
show time.’
‘Right,’ said Kitty, and Matilda felt her disappointment; renewed their bond, and taking Kitty Cartwright’s tomahawks, handled them like new spurs, which a cowgirl, having roped her heart out in the ring, unclasps, and hung them on the wardrobe rack.
‘It’s alright,’ said Kitty. It’s alright the sky went cold; for the shock that Earl would be away made the moment in which she stood quiver, as a colt in the corral feels the shock of a saddle and quivers: so she side-stepped: so she quivered.
Like a dancer spinning offstage, or a bronco bucking a rider, she burst, out, pausing to untangle from the tent, came to her trailer. There was the shiny silver siding and rusty bottom. There was an emptiness about the core of life; a small tin room. Performers must dress to show. Before the show they must dress. She reached for the door of the trailer. The curtains were still open. She had wakened early to find herself alone. The cowboys stayed up so late that Earl convinced her, when her arm was broken, that she would heal faster if he left her alone. She preferred it. And he knew it.
‘Good lord, you scared me!’ exclaimed Kitty, clapping her chest.
‘Good to see you, too,’ said the dusty cowpoke sitting on the trailer’s hookup. ‘Good indeed,’ he repeated, and jumped to his feet.
‘How did—when did,’ asked Kitty Cartwright (thinking it outrageous to be snuck up on before she had to be in the ring), watching him reach out a hand. She smoothed down the satin of her shirt, like a schoolgirl at a dance, awkward in her new clothes. For a single second she could not remember his name! so surprised was she to see him, so angry, so bereaved, to utterly taken aback to have Kent Hawkins come to her unexpectedly before the show! (She had not heard a word from him in years.)
‘How ya been?’ said Kent Hawkins, his voice trembling; shaking her hand, shaking it too hard and too long. She’s grown colder, he thought, leaning against the trailer. I won’t tell her so, he thought, but she’s grown colder. She’s eying me, he thought, a sudden shame coming over him, though he had shaken her hand. Sliding a hand into his pocket, he pulled out can of chewing tobacco and slipped a pinch under his lip.
Same as always, thought Kitty; the same uncertain look; the same dusty boots; a little more worked by the sun his face is, a little browner, lined, perhaps, but he looks good, and still like he did when we were young.
‘Good to see you, yourself,’ she muttered. He spat a stream of tobacco at the grass. Same as ever, she thought.
He had just come into town that day, he said; would be gone to the next tomorrow; and how was everyone—Earl? Matilda?
‘And what’s this?’ he said, nodding his hat towards her satin shirt.
He’s a fine one to talk, Kitty thought.
Here she is, decked out; decked out as usual; here she’s been whooping it up while I make the rodeo circuit; playing with calves; bake sales; ticket buying fans, he thought, growing more and more annoyed, for there’s nothing that ruins a good woman like a husband, he thought; and money; and having a rich husband, like that asshole, Earl. And there you have it, he thought, spitting another stream into the grass.
‘Matilda’s good. Earl’s always busy,’ Kitty said.
She reached for the door handle, and said, did he mind that she had to get dressed for the show?
‘Which I don’t reckon you’ll stay for,’ she said, ‘seeing as how you’ve got places to go.’
It was good to hear her say that—wondering if he’d stay! He couldn’t think of anything he’d rather do than watch her compete.
Why wouldn’t she just ask him to stay? he asked.
To the point, thought Kitty, always to the point! Never one to mince words! Now I remember why I couldn’t make up my mind—what did make up my mind—not to be with him, she wondered, that dark winter?
‘I can’t believe you’re here!’ she said, idling her hand, fingers loose, on the door handle.
‘Do you remember,’ she said, ‘how the wind used to rattle the windows at the old ranch?’
‘Sure do,’ he said; and he remembered sitting at the camp fire alone, nothing to say, with her father; who had died years ago; and he had not contacted Kitty. But he never got on well with old man Cartwright, the fool-headed old man.
‘My brother lives there now,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been back in years.’
Then, just as happens around a dinner table with distant cousins, when everyone is tired of talking, looking at the mashed potatoes, tapping their feet, clearing their throats, but says nothing—that’s what Kent Hawkins did now. Why dwell in the past he thought? Why dredge it up again? Why?
‘Do you remember the pond?’ she said, her voice quickened, her throat tightening.
She looked at Kent Hawkins; her look, calling up that bygone time, those old feelings; eyeballed him, sniffed the air around him and then scampered away, as a wild horse does when you startle it in the woods. She rubbed her forehead with her free hand.
‘Of
course I do,’ said
A whistle sounded.
‘Here comes Matilda,’ said Kitty, with false excitement.
‘
‘I’ll
be off then,’
‘
*
It’s all for shame, he cried, shame, shame, shame!
Still, the tent was hot. Still, he would get through the show. Still, the rodeo had a way of keeping on day to day. Alone. He, Number Seven, was alone, called up from the other clowns to hear the truth of God’s word, to be called up to Heaven with the worthy, while the others were left behind to face Armageddon.
‘It’s show time,’ said Old Lady Reese.
The word ‘time’ shattered; poured through him; and from his lips whispered tongues of fire, like the anointing, words without his forming, wild, unknown, from his lips to the ear of God.
‘The time of God is upon on,’ Number Seven mumbled. For he could not hold in the Truth any longer.
But the tent flaps parted. A man was walking towards them. It was Jesus! But no crown of thorns, no wounds. I must spread the gospel, Number Seven muttered to himself, his eyes focused on the riggings at the top of the center tent pole.
‘Are you alright?’ said Old Lady Reese, giving him the look of an unbeliever.
Preshow jitters, Kent Hawkins thought as he passed them and climbed into the bleachers. Jitters at his age, he marveled, though he could be a newcomer, down on his luck, lost his farm.
*
Oh God, I’m going to blow it; Kitty felt it down her spine as the crowd cheered her entrance and all eyes watched her wave her tomahawks in the air, their streamers, blue and green, cascading around her shoulders. Her name crackled over the microphone from the announcer’s booth.
There was his sign from God, the crackling call from Heaven. Number Seven could hear Old Lady Reese talking to Earl a few feet from where he stood at the base of the center tent pole.
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Earl was saying.
‘I think you should leave him alone,’ she said.
He could see her, like a fattened hog, waddling behind, trying to stop him. But Earl kept coming.
‘I said I’ll take care of it…’ Earl said, thrusting her hand aside (Earl was forceful even with women).
Earl was coming for him. Earl would hold him down. Earl would say, ‘Need a break, fella?’ But no; not Earl; not anyone. Scrambling onto the tent pole rigging, clambering from foot over foot, hand over hand, up the sturdy rope, the uncertain business of finding a falling place, the shocked gasp of the crowd, the looking down at the ground, the watching it approach as he fell. They need to know. ‘The time has come!’ he cried and flung himself off the rigging down onto the sawdust tent floor.
‘Coward,’ spat Earl.
Kitty whirled at the crowds yell, watched a ragged man fall from the top of the tent across the ring from her, the cowpokes descending on him in a flash, the crowd rising to their feet in awe.
Why would he do it? thought Kitty. Why would he end it like that? During my show? The crowd was leaving, frightened. It was a failure. She stood frozen in the ring, her tomahawks limply held at her sides, streamers trailing in the wood chips on the floor.
It is Kitty, he said.
For there she was.