Jo Dies

A few days after Sarah’s visit, their talk still weighed on Irene’s mine. She regretted some of the things she had said to her sister. Sarah was not the kind to show hurt feelings but Irene was afraid that her response to her sister’s suggestion that she sell the house might have stung her. She should never have said that the house didn’t mean the same to Sarah that it did to her. She need not have worried. Sarah would have been the first to admit that the farm didn’t mean to her what it meant to Irene. In fact, she had left at the first opportunity.

From the minute Sarah laid eyes on Harvey Hardee she had begun mentally packing her bags to leave Pungo Creek. Maybe that’s what had attracted her to Harvey in the first place. He was from someplace else.

Sarah was thirty-six. She had just about resigned herself to dying an old maid when she quite literally bumped into Harvey during a shopping trip to Belhaven. She dropped her handbag and the parcels she had just purchased in O’Neal’s Drug Store. He picked them up and handed them to her. “Sorry Ma’am” he said, tipping his hat. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

“No, Sir. I’m just fine.” Sarah couldn’t take her eyes off the handsome stranger. He had dark curly hair and he was so tall that she had to crane her neck to see his face.

“Are you sure? You look a little unsteady.” Sarah couldn’t tell him that his green eyes and his smile were making her wobbly.

“I’m just fine sir.” She repeated. Then she boldly extended her hand. “My name is Sarah Foreman. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”

“The pleasure is mine,” he said, taking her hand. “I’m Harvey Hardee.”

“What brings you to Belhaven?”

“A business venture. I am considering purchasing Mr. Sewell’s hardware store.”

“I didn’t know he was selling his store.”

“Neither does he” Harvey laughed.

Sarah soon discovered that Harvey Hardee always got what he wanted. He told her he already owned a hardware store in Portsmouth, Virginia. What he didn’t tell her was that he had bought the store with money he had embezzled from the previous owner while managing the store.

“I’m thinking of selling the store in Portsmouth and moving down here where it’s peaceful and the women are pretty.”

Sarah turned berry red. Harvey grinned down at the pretty farm girl before him. She looked ripe for the picking. “Why don’t you let me buy you an ice cream and you can tell me all about your little town.”

Without waiting for her response Harvey took her elbow steered her back into O’Neal’s Drug Store.

Mr. Sewell sold Harvey the store and before the paint was dry on the new sign Sarah was setting up housekeeping in the tiny apartment over “Hardee’s Hardware”.

Irene hadn’t blamed her sister for wanting a place of her own. Even though Sarah had never complained, Irene had known she had not been comfortable in the house on Pungo Creek after Irene had married Caleb and the two of them had moved into the bedroom she and her sister had shared. Sarah had moved into the front room parlor next to her father’s bedroom. The sisters had looked after the house while their father and Caleb took care of the farm. As time passed Sarah felt she no longer belonged there. She felt like an intruder in the house where she’d been raised.

When Sarah told Irene she was pregnant, she was thrilled for her, but a little envious too. “Why Sister, Caleb and I have been trying to have a child for five years and here you are going to give Daddy his first grand baby right away.”

Sarah was well aware of their efforts. The thin walls couldn’t muffle the sound of their lovemaking. Sarah was surprised by her prim sister’s passion, but she’d been astonished by her own. Harvey’s first touch unlocked desire in her that she had not known existed. Harvey had been a skillful lover. He’d introduced Sarah to the joy of lovemaking and she had greedily accepted his instruction.

Eight months after Sarah became Mrs. Harvey Hardee, Jo Ann was born.

There were complications with the delivery. Sarah had been alone when her labor started. She was already in delivery when the doctor arrived. The umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck and she was deprived of oxygen. Jo Ann was left severely brain damaged. The doctor was honest with Sarah. “It’s unlikely your daughter will ever walk or talk. She’ll always have the brain of an infant. I’m sorry, Sarah. There was nothing I could do.”

For the first few months Sarah hoped the doctor had been wrong. Each morning she carried Jo down to the hardware store where she slept in a basket on the counter.

Jo was a beautiful baby. She had Harvey’s curly black hair and Sarah’s grey eyes. People came into the store for nails and flypaper and stayed to coo and cluck at Sarah’s child.

Harvey, who had been content from the beginning to let his wife run the store, spent less and less time there. Instead, he stayed upstairs and drank. He avoided his daughter.

“Harvey, just take her in your arms. She won’t break.”

But Jo was already broken and Sarah’s love – as strong as it was – could not mend her.

As the years passed, Jo grew but remained as an infant. Caleb built a special chair for her so Irene could keep Jo with her in the store. She now had full responsibility for the business. Sarah made excuses for her husband. “Irene, it’s been hard on Harvey. You don’t know how much he blames himself – for what happened. Just give him some time.” But Harvey’s drinking continued to worsen and his health began to fail. He only left the apartment to get more whiskey or to gamble in the smoky backroom of the pool hall. By the time Sarah saw her husband for what he was, it was too late. Alcohol had transformed her once handsome husband into an unshaven, quarrelsome recluse.

Soon after Jo’s eighth birthday Harvey died. He was only 47 years old. The same kindly doctor who had delivered her daughter tried to comfort Sarah again. “It was his liver. It just gave out.” What he didn’t say was what the whole town was saying – that it was a blessing he died before he passed out holding a lit cigarette and killed them all.

Sarah had still not recovered from Harvey’s death when more bad news came. Harvey’s gambling had been worse than she had known. His debts had mounted over the years. The store was heavily mortgaged and there was no way Sarah could save it.

“What on earth are you going to do, Sister?” Irene was furious with her dead brother-in-law. “I’d dig the bastard up and kill him again if I could.”

“Irene! Please don’t talk that way about Harvey. He couldn’t help the way he was. The Lord will provide for my Jo and me. I don’t doubt Him.”

It was Caleb who provided. “My Daddy’s old place over in Sidney is sitting empty. I could put a new roof on it and fix the windows.”

“Nonsense! Sarah will move in with us.”

“Irene. Be sensible. You with a six year old boy and a husband to look after?” Sarah turned to her brother-in-law. “I would be grateful if you would fix up your Daddy’s place for me – very grateful.”

* * *

As Irene rowed across the creek that morning, she sensed something was wrong. As she approached the landing in front of Sarah’s house she shivered in spite of the warm June day.
She found her sister she found her sitting next to Jo’s bed. She understood immediately the cause of her premonition. Jo was dead. Irene had already fixed her hair and dressed her in a gold print dress. Death had relaxed Jo’s contorted features. She looked almost beautiful. “I want to get her a nice stone, Irene. I was thinking of a baby lamb or an angel. I know she’d have been twenty her next birthday, but she was always my baby girl.”

Irene put her arms around her sister and together they wept. They wept for their lost loves and their lost dreams.

Irene buried Jo in the little cemetery next to Sidney Free Will Baptist Church. She lay beside Harvey – not far away lay Sarah and Irene’s mother and father. Nearby Caleb and Grover rested side by side like brothers. Sarah and Irene stood near Jo’s grave. Sarah smiled sadly.

“Between us, we’re filling up this little graveyard, Sister.”