What Solomon Saw
by Mary Dean Cason
More than anything in the world Tucker Johnston wanted to see Libby Tatum’s titties. It was an overnight obsession you might say as they had sprouted within the same time frame. One day she was as flat chested as the rest of us, the next she was in a dressing room at Thalheimer’s Department Store scooping them into a 34-B Maidenform. No training bra for these gals, they could two-wheel on their own.
Libby wasn’t a likable girl, not one little bit. She might have been curvy, but even at twelve she had an edge to her. She was bossy and made anybody younger or smaller feel like they just weren’t up to snuff. She loved the word “mature.” She must have heard it in a movie or read it in that pamphlet they give the public school kids, Your Changing Body. Anyway, she couldn’t get enough of it.
“When you’re more mature, Martha, you’ll understand.” Or with a bored air, “I guess I’m just more mature than most girls my age.” A smart aleck, big-boobed, know-it-all was more like it.
As she walked down Elizabeth Avenue, the Maidenform’s concentric conical stitching formed two perfect beehives under a too-tight T-shirt and pointed her in our direction. Tucker hopped off his bike, stood, jaw agape, and somehow mustered a weak “Hey, Libby,” while directing his gaze at the center of her chest. My own jaw was set firm as I bit the inside of my lip.
“Comin’ to the creek?” he asked her.
“No, I’m gonna lay out in my back yard,” she yawned as she held up her baby oil and iodine. “Wonna come along?”
He tried to hide his eagerness, bless his stupid heart.
“I guess,” he blew out air. “Nothin’ better to do.” Slowly he got back on his bike and made circles in the street.
My face was getting hotter as he spoke. Nothin’ better to do? What about the tree house? I said to myself. What about the creek we damned yesterday? There could be a mess of tadpoles in it by now.
Tucker was the best creek scavenger, rock skipper, and tree climber I knew. He was my big brother too and now he was a traitor! I could’ve carved more backbone out of soap. As for Libby, I didn’t much like her before. Now I hated her, and her 34-Bs.
“Hey, Martha,” she asked, “You wonna come too?” I answered a too quick, too sharp “No!” Then added, “I’m busy buildin’ a porch on the tree house. If ya’ll get bored sun tannin’ I’d appreciate some damn help!” I ended just short of shrill.
I watched my brother follow Libby Tatum up the hill, doing wheelies on his bike. School had just started back and I had promised God and Sister St. Hilda that I would watch my temper this year, but I was already cussing under my breath and shooting the finger at their backs.
Until that day I’d never thought much about bosoms, except when I saw Mamma nursing my little brother, David. Then I just thought they were gross. When I was six I pulled my panties down in front of Harvey Wade. We did the usual inspection and became familiar with what sat in the saddle, but that was the extent of our research. What occupied the upper half of a woman’s torso was of little interest until Libby sashayed down the street that day.
***
Tucker, the Wade boys, and I spent our summers and weekends as a company of ragamuffins. We rose each morning and grabbed the first thing out of a drawer—usually shorts and a T-shirt. We blew through the kitchen, slurped down some Wheaties, and ran into the woods to begin the day’s work: tree house building, creek damning, and salamander dissection. We knew it was lunchtime when our stomachs said so or when we heard Josephine holler out the back door. A quick tomato sandwich with a glass of milk and we were back for the second shift.
Around four o’clock Josephine would round us up, give us baths and plunk us in front of Davey Crocket. When Mamma and Daddy got home from work, the only evidence of the day’s adventures lay crumpled in the clothes hamper. Well duped by the scent of Halo shampoo and Ivory soap, Mamma would kiss us and finish cooking the supper Josephine had started. The gears of the day slowed as the sun slipped. Josephine’s hand would cup each chin as she kissed us good-bye.
“Mind yo’ Mamma, Sugah,” she’d say. Then she’d walk to the car, where Melvin was waiting. Melvin Witherspoon was the tallest man I’d ever seen and the blackest. Josephine was round and brown. One night when Daddy was reading to me I told him that Jack Sprat and his wife were just like Melvin and Josephine. He said that might well be, but if he ever heard me say anything of the kind to either one of them I wouldn’t sit for a week.
Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
Between the two they licked the platter clean.
Life was sweet, simple and rich. But now that Libby Tatum had tits and a bra nothing would ever be sweet and simple again.
We lived in North Carolina’s answer to Levittown, a new development of cracker box houses built on a swath of land Farmer Eli Peters had sold off to a developer in the early 1950s. Mr. Peters had kept most of his acreage where he still farmed a little cotton, corn, and tobacco and kept some cows and chickens. Daddy thought we had the best of both worlds, a new house, a city bus stop on the corner, and a working farm for a back yard.
Our tree house sat deep in an old oak we called Solomon ‘cause Mr. Peters said a tree that big must be as old and wise as a prophet. It stood about a hundred and fifty yards from our back door. Its branches spread out half a city block and it stood tall as a five-story building. Solomon was a hiding place to smoke cigarettes, a command center for neighborhood attacks, and a church, where you could sit blue and moody. I knew every gnarled limb, which branches would hold me and which ones were brittle. And I knew a secret knothole where I once found three baby squirrels.
There were remnants of previous hideouts in Solomon. Some had rotted; some had been architecturally unsound. But mine would last. Daddy came out one Saturday and gave it a once over. He drove in some big long wood screws and pronounced it sound. My plan was to build a little porch out onto a supporting limb.
In spite of my anger I was there after Tucker and Libby had trailed off, hauling up nails and scraps of one by fours I had gathered at a building site after the workers had taken off the day before. Mr. Peters walked by wearing the same overalls I swear he’d worn everyday for the past thirty years and the same sweat-stained straw hat. A shotgun was open and folded over his forearm. Five or six bird dogs pranced ahead of him and sniffed the ground.
“Hey, Mr. Peters.” I said politely.
“How do.” Was barely audible and he was gone along with his yapping dogs.
***
The Sunday after Libby Tatum had blossomed was the first time St. Leo’s Catholic Church was going to have a Sunday Evening Mass. We must have been a progressive parish, cause we were going to have a guitar player and a folk singer accompany our choir.
We got up late on Sunday morning and Daddy and I drove to Krispy Kreme. On the way home Daddy almost wrecked the car when he saw Libby mowing the grass in the first bikini any of us had ever seen.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Martha, somebody better tell that girl she shouldn’t be mowing the lawn in her underwear. I better never catch you doing such a thing.” I was delighted Daddy thought I had such potential. We both took a second to watch Libby jiggle from shoulders to cheeks right along with the power mower.
Minutes later we were sitting in the kitchen, drinking milky coffee and dunking our donuts when Tucker came in the front door.
“I sure am glad I don’t have to go to that Hootenanny Mass with ya’ll tonight,” he
bragged.
“Is that right, Mr. Johnston?” Daddy shot back at him. “And just why is it that you have special dispensation?”
“Cause I already went, that’s why.” Tucker was down right self-righteous, something Daddy couldn’t abide. Then Tucker directed his attention to Mamma.
“After I finished delivering papers this mornin’ I went to eight o’clock mass. I wasn’t dressed too nice, so I stood in the back. But it still counts, don’t it Mamma?
“Doesn’t it,” Mamma corrected.
“Anyway I have a science test tomorrow and I hafta to stay home and study.”
Daddy said that Tucker was a slick planner and suspected that he just wanted to watch Ed Sullivan. Mamma said it was time he exercised some independence and reminded Tucker that trust was something that was earned.
The guitar player just got started good when the stained glass windows lit up like Christmas morning. Lightening, thunder, and torrential rain drowned out the guitar, the singer, and even Father Daley’s sermon. Half way through Mass the electricity went out. It was beautiful, though a little spooky with just the altar candles lighting the whole church. Daddy winked at me and whispered it was “a real frog strangler goin’ on out there.” Mamma said she hoped Tucker had enough sense to close the windows. David slept through the whole storm, cuddled on a blanket in the pew between Mamma and me.
As soon as it had come upon us it passed. We came out of church to a starry sky and rivers running down the sidewalks. Afterwards, Father Daley told Daddy that it looked like God wasn’t all too pleased about Sunday night Mass. Daddy said maybe He just preferred pipe organs to guitars.
We rode home dodging broken limbs and flooded viaducts. About two miles from the house the electricity came back on. We watched lights and televisions pop back on one street at a time.
Before we even got out of the car Tucker was at Mamma’s door, helping her with David’s diaper bag.
“That storm was as bad as a hurricane, wasn’t it?” He proclaimed as we walked toward the house.
“You alright?” asked Mamma, “You shut all the windows?”
When we got inside Daddy knew something wasn’t right.
“Tucker, what’s that dining room chair doing in the middle of the living room?”
“Oh, I was just using it to put my feet on to do sit ups.” He laughed nervously and moved it back to the dining room. It’d never occurred to me that Tucker was concerned about his stomach muscles. He wasn’t even playing football yet. Things got even more peculiar as the night wore on. I’d never seen my brother so considerate—helping Mamma get David down, helping Daddy reopen the windows. Why, he even asked me if I wanted to listen to his transistor radio while he studied, an item I coveted so badly it stayed in his pocket at all times, far away from my pea-green envy eyes.
The next morning before school Josephine and Mamma were leaning against the kitchen sink, sipping coffee when Mildred Tatum arrived at the front door. Even a glimpse of what Libby might have ahead of her was enough to make you feel down right sorry for her. And if I didn’t hate her so much I would have started a novena right then and there. Mildred was tall, high hipped with coal black wiry hair that needed to be tamed at all times by a battalion of bobby pins. Her skin was a pale yellow. Her only make-up, poorly applied blue-red lipstick, was as likely to land on her teeth as her lips. Once I heard Mamma describe her to Daddy as a hysteric, and “on edge.” But Mamma was being kind.
“Why, Morning, Mildred, what brings you by so early?” The kitchen became tiny when Mildred walked in. She pulled out a chair without being offered one and lit one of Mamma’s Salem’s, also without invitation. Smoke never bothered me much, so it must have been Mildred. Within a minute or two it seemed like we were sitting in a green fog.
“That good-for-nothing tree-house, that’s what. I am absolutely fit to be tied, Theresa. My Libby fell out of that tree house yesterday evenin’ trying to get down in the storm and broke her arm! She said she wobbled on a loose board and missed the ladder.”
“Mildred! I’m so sorry…” but Mildred Tatum put up her hand to hush my mother while pulling hard on the Salem. She continued on, barely taking a breath between sentences.
“Old Mr. Peters heard her holler and came and got her and brought her home in his truck wrapped in a horse blanket. My poor Libby, she was worried she might be bleeding so she quick took off her new Sunday blouse. Mr. Peters must have gotten an eye full when he found her—you know my Libby is developing.” She raised her eyes up over the rims of her cat-eye glasses, first to Mamma, then to Josephine.
“Well, Maxim and I got her to Baptist Hospital in a hurry. They set the bone, put her in a cast and gave her something for the pain.” Another deep draw and the same hand flew up to prevent any interruption or sympathy.
“So listen up Theresa and listen good, I want that tree house torn out immediately before the next child breaks a neck, not just an elbow. It’s unsafe, that’s all there is to it and I want you and William to take care of it today, not tomorrow, but today.”
Then she spun around to face me and nailed me right in the eye.
“And you, Miss Martha can bring your jaw up to your top lip. It’s time you started playing with dolls instead of two-by-fours anyway.”
Mamma and Josephine had maintained their positions throughout the harangue. David chewed his Zwieback. Tucker sank his chin deeper into his cereal bowl and read the back of the Raisin Bran box. But at the suggestion of replacing lumber with dolls I was out of my chair.
“You can’t…” I started toward Mildred Tatum my jaw so geared up I could have chewed glass. But, Josephine’s arm came around my shoulder and gently pulled me into her. Mamma moved to the table and started to talk.
“Mildred, I appreciate your concern for my daughter’s choice of activities, but there are certainly worse things a child can get into these days other than carpentry. I’ll call William and have him take a look at the tree house when he gets home from work. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get to work myself. How ‘bout if I drop you off on my way and you can tell me all about Libby’s arm.”
In a single gliding step, my five-foot-two mother had slipped her pocketbook on her wrist and escorted too-tall Mildred out of the kitchen. They left the house and walked toward the Chevy.
When they’d gone Josephine picked up her dishrag and talked right into it while she wiped the table.
“Well I do declare if ‘dat woman don’ beat all. She jes’ come in here at qwatah to-eight in the mawnin’ spoutin’ off and tellin’ us what to do. She right scary, all that hair and lip color.”
She took the end of her apron and wiped David’s face and hands then went back to the table.
“And if you ax me, serve ‘dat Libby right breakin’ huh ahm. Whut she doin’ climbing up in ‘dat tree house all by hersef’ on a Sunday ebnin’? Why wan’ she home havin’ dinnah wid’ her Mamma and Daddy or doin’ huh homework? Sumpin’ don’t sit right ‘bout ‘dis. Naw, Sir. Sumpin’ ain’t right at all.
Tucker finished his cereal, carried the bowl to the sink and skulked out of the kitchen. The “somethin’ that ain’t right” grabbed his book bag and went walking down the hall out the door.
“Ok, Buster, you better fess-up and fess-up fast,” I demanded when I caught up with him.
“You don’t have any science test. Hell, we’ve only been in school four days. You were in that tree house with Libby Tatum.” I Perry Masoned him right in his face. And what I got was a stunner. My big 12-year old brother sat down in the grass and started to cry. I hadn’t seen him cry since he’d cut the tip off his finger a year ago.
“I’m gonna go to hell, Martha. I’m gonna die and go to hell or at least spend about three hundred years in purgatory.”
It’s amazing how an admission of guilt and a gush of tears from a boy can usher in a truckload of sympathy from a girl, even a sister. Tucker had done wrong and deserved forgiveness. I just wasn’t sure what for.
“What happened, Tucker? How’d Libby break her arm?”
“I’m gonna catch hell, Martha, when Daddy finds out, I’m good as dead. I know old man Peters is gonna tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“That Libby did a striptease for me and Harvey Wade.
“What?’
“She took off her shirt and bra, on the tree-house porch…me and Harvey were standin’ on the ground looking up at her. She was twirlin’ around to throw her bra and lightnin’ cracked like a bullwhip and the next thing I knew she was on the ground screaming!”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jesus, Libby Tatum was a Baptist! People in North Carolina might expect that kind of behavior from a Catholic, but never a Baptist.
“Then what happened, Tucker?”
“I heard Mr. Peters calling, ‘What’s wrong over there?’ Harvey ran off like the chicken shit he is. Libby had one arm holding on to the other, I found her blouse and wrapped it around her. Soon as I did that Mr. Peters was there with a blanket. It was raining like hell by then, thunder and lightening to beat the band. You could hardly hear, the wind was so loud, the trees blowing. Mr. Peters hollered that it was dangerous out there in the woods that we could get hit by lightening, or a falling tree limb.
‘When I got home I closed all the windows, put on dry clothes and pulled a dining room chair into the middle of the living room. I figured if lightening was going to strike it’d have to travel half way across the room to get me. That’s when the front door blew open and the electricity went out. I just knew God was gunnin’ for me for lying about going to church and saying I was studying when I wasn’t. I said, ‘Sweet Jesus, don’t kill me, I know I shouldn’t have looked at Libby’s titties, I know I shouldn’t have asked her to show ‘em to Harvey and me. I promise I’ll go to Confession and I’ll never look at another girl as long as I live.’ That’s what I said, Martha. Then I knelt down and rested my elbows on the seat and said a Rosary just like Mamma does during Lent. I was in the middle of a string of Hail Mary’s when I realized the storm had passed and ya’ll were driving up. I was never so glad in my life to see anybody. But now I know I’m gonna get skinned alive. They probably won’t let me play football this year, or race in the Soap Box Derby. Hell, they might even send me to reform school!”
Deep sobs rocked my brother as I reached over to hug him. I was, for a change, innocent, and I felt deliciously righteous. I was careful not to exploit it, but I liked my older brother being beholden to me, if only for a little while. I also liked having the mystery of the chair in the living room explained. Tucker wiped his eyes and we made it to the bus stop on time. He rode sullen all the way to school.
When we got home that afternoon Josephine told us she’d grab a switch if she caught us in the woods, so we stayed home while she ironed Daddy’s shirts and folded diapers. It was gloomy anyway so we took the clay we’d dug out of the creek the week before and made an ashtray for Daddy. A Soap Box Derby letter came and for the rest of the day we drew pictures of how we wanted Tucker’s car to look.
Daddy didn’t get halfway up the walk when I buttonholed him with the news about Libby Tatum, (omitting Tucker’s revelation) and what Mrs. Tatum had said about my tree house. He had stopped to have a word with Melvin who was waiting for Josephine.
“Martha, where in world are your manners? You leave ‘em at school? Now, you say hey to Melvin and I’ll talk to you in a minute.”
“Hey Melvin,” I whined, I’m sorry for bein’ rude.”
“Sounds to me like you jes’ in a hurry. Who dat say you hafta tear out yo’ tree house?” I rushed back at him, sure Melvin would hop on my side in a New York minute.
“That mean old horse face, Miz. Tatum that’s who.”
Daddy stared stern at me.
“I’m sorry Daddy, but does she have a right to tell us what to do with our own tree house?”
“No, Martha, that’s Mr. Peters’ tree and only he has a right to tell us what to do or not do with it. He’s always given you children a lot of freedom to roam his property, best you ask him how he feels about his tree.” He turned back to the car.
“Melvin, you’ll have to excuse me, I have to check the architectural integrity of Martha’s tree house. You’n Josephine have a nice evenin’.”
I said bye and have a nice evening too, then pulled Daddy towards the woods.
When we approached Old Solomon and I skipped ahead but Daddy said he wanted to go up first in case things had jarred loose in the storm. As he started up, we saw Mr. Peters up on the roof of the tree house holding the longest stick I’d ever seen. He was looking up into the upper branches.
“How do, William,” Mr. Peters called down.
“Evenin’ Eli. Mind if I come up?” Mr. Peters stepped onto a limb and offered his hand to Daddy who was making his way up a ladder of one-by-eights screwed securely into the trunk. It was funny watching the two Gullivers hunched over, traipsing around my tree house, ducking their heads. They pulled and poked, stomped and kicked like they were checking car tires. Finally, they came down, chuckling that things were safe as houses and that I showed promise as a builder.
“Don’t you worry ‘bout Miz Tatum, Martha,” Mr. Peters declared. “This here tree house is likely to last as long as Old Solomon hizself.” Again he looked up into the tree scoping its vast neighborhood of branches and leaves.
Daddy said much obliged to Mr. Peters and told me not to stay too long, that supper would be ready in a minute. He walked off back toward the house leaving me alone with Mr. Peters.
This was my cue to thank the owner of my tree, but he barely let me get out a word of appreciation.
“You should be right proud of that brother of yourn, Martha,” he scratched at his ear and spit out some tobacco juice.
“What brother?”
“Tucker.”
“Why?”
“Why, he did a right brave thing last night, stayin’ with that girl when she fell; lightnin’ flashin’ and tree limbs fallin’ and all. Gave her his shirt.” He leaned on his tall stick and studied my face.
“That fool, Harvey Wade run off like a scared hen, but not your Tucker. He helped me carry Libby to my place, cleaned out the cab of my truck and helped me get her inside. There weren’t room for the three of us or I’d a taken him home too. I told him to stay put till the storm passed, but he said he had to get home and shut the winders, so he run on.”
Tucker hadn’t mentioned any of this. I reckoned his guilt had overshadowed any good deed.
I’d never gotten up real close to Mr. Peters before. He always smelled like the inside of a barn. But he came around and put his hand on my shoulder.
“I just want you youngins’ to be careful, Martha. A broke arm can just as soon be a broke neck. That’s one thing Crazy Miz Tatum’s right about.” Gruff Old Mr. Peters, who’d never said more than three words to me was actually touching my heart. He started to walk off, but I called after him.
“Hey Mr. Peters, what’s the stick for? You goin’ fishin’?”
“In a matter of speakin’ I reckon am. But this pole ain’t got enough poke. Got to find me another one.” He laughed and I did too, not knowing exactly what I was laughing at.
I started home to supper but turned around to take one last survey of my tree house and the glory that was Solomon. The September sun was setting sending glimmers of orange and yellow through the leaves that had not yet changed their color. Then I saw it and knew what Mr. Peters had been fishing for. High up on a brittle branch, perfectly lit by the setting sun hung Libby Tatum’s bra.