Pansy and Benny

 

Pansy glared at Benny, her face was as red as the roses on her print dress. She had just finished telling him to repair the screen door, weed the garden, and clean out the smokehouse. Benny looked out at his pond and dreamed of fishing.

“I’m gonna take care of all that, Sweetie.”

Years of marriage told Pansy otherwise.

“You’re a gonna. You’re a gonna. You’re a gonna shit and fall back in it. That’s what you’re a gonna do. Nothing gets done around here without you going fishing first.”

Benny fished a few hours everyday but always finished his chores. He was tempted to point out this fact, but arguing with Pansy was an exercise in futility. He kissed her instead. She pulled back initially, but then accepted the peace offering. How could she not? Benny had stolen her heart the first time she met him – a memory that grew more golden with each passing year. She shared it with anyone who would listen.

“I was sixteen and Benny was eighteen. My heart nearly busted from my chest when I first saw him. Believe it or don’t, he rode up on a white horse just like in a fairy tale.
“I was wearing my Sunday dress and had my hair done up. Folks always said I was a real looker. Benny must have thought so. Else why would he have proposed a month after we met? We married that spring and I been with the old coot ever since.”

Benny’s father gave him five acres of bottom land. Pansy’s dowry was a calf. The calf became dozens of cows. The bottom land grew into hundreds of acres.

Time brought them four boys, a girl, and a brick house big enough to hold them all. But it could barely contain the crowd that came for the holidays. Their children and their families would gather to feast, gossip and tell tales.

Pansy would hold court after dinner while Benny sat in stoic silence. Most holidays, she asked Curtis, her eldest, to tell about the washing machine.

“It was the best Sears made. I put their old roller washer in the barn so they would have to use new one. I just wanted to make life easier…”

Pansy chimed in. “But it didn’t work out that way, did it son?”

“No, Mamma. You know it didn’t. I came back the next spring and couldn’t find you and Poppa. I was worried something had happened. I went out on the porch and saw smoke at the back of the lot. I thought maybe y’all was fighting a brush fire.”

Pansy interrupted once more. “But we wasn’t, was we?

“Dang it, Mamma. Am I gonna tell this story or are you?”

Pansy rolled her eyes, but let Curtis continue.

“Well, when I got back there. I couldn’t believe it. Y’all was boiling your clothes in the old washtub...”

Pansy couldn’t resist. “What did we tell you?”
 

Curtis sighed.

“Y’all said that you tried the new machine, but that you couldn’t afford to use it.”
“That’s right, son. Our utility bill went up almost two dollars, so we went back to using the old washer.”

The washing machine tale was one of the least offensive of Pansy’s tales. She loved telling about the time she got a boil on her butt and asked her daughter-in-law to burst it. Or the time Benny was driving drunk and she stuck a hatpin into his thigh to make him slow down. When she told the hatpin tale, Benny would slap the table and shout, “Pansy hush!”

Pansy would hush. Hush was a word she heard many times when Benny was drinking. Hush was the word that preceded a slap. But one day, after one too many slaps, Pansy took the children and moved in with her sister.

“I can’t take it no more, Benny. I ain’t coming back unless you stop drinking and start going to church.”

Benny resisted Pansy’s demands at first, but the silent and empty house broke him. He began attending church every Sunday and even went to Wednesday prayer meetings. When he threw away his whiskey bottles, Pansy relented and brought the children home.

Pansy had a stroke when she reached eighty. Benny sat by her bed everyday. She couldn’t speak, but her eyes told Benny how much she loved him.

When she died, Benny tried to hide his pain with a lie buried in a joke. “I been waiting for her to die for a long time. Now I can go fishing whenever I want.”
His bravery didn’t last. His smile and laughter were as empty as his heart. Benny walked to forget her, but Pansy’s spirit followed him whenever he went. He even felt her when he fished.

When Benny’s time came, he followed Pansy home.

The children sold most of the farm but kept the house and fishing pond. They put a cement bench by the pond. They claim if you sit still and are quiet, you can see Benny cast his line and hear Pansy whisper, “Nothing gets done around here without you going fishing first.”