Dartmouth College Dartmouth Digital Commons Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty Faculty Work 1987 The Passion of Estelle Jordan Ernest Hebert Dartmouth College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa Part of the Fiction Commons Dartmouth Digital Commons Citation Hebert, Ernest, "The Passion of Estelle Jordan" (1987). Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty. 3957. https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/facoa/3957 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Work at Dartmouth Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Dartmouth: Peer-reviewed articles by Dartmouth faculty by an authorized administrator of Dartmouth Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE PASSION O F ESTELLE JORDAN also by ernest hebert The Darby Chronicles The Dogs of March A Little More Than Kin Whisper My Name The Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell Fiction Mad Boys The Old American Never Back Down I Love U Nonfiction New Hampshire Patterns with Jon Gilbert Fox The Passion of Estelle Jordan Ernest Hebert university press of new england Hanover and London University Press of New England www.upne.com © 1987 Ernest Hebert All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First published by University Press of New England in 1993, together with A Little More Than Kin, under the title The Kinship. The Passion of Estelle Jordan was first published in 1987 by The Viking Press. For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Permissions, University Press of New England, One Court Street, Suite 250, Lebanon NH 03766; or visit www.upne.com Paperback ISBN: 978-1-61168-627-2 Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61168-628-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940329 5 4 3 2 1 Contents 1. A Voice 1 2. Mired 17 3. The Tremor and the Trans Am 25 4. A Birth 34 5. Estelle and the Witch 43 6. Back-of-the-Barn Adult Books ’n’ Flicks 56 7. The Old Farmer 73 8. Critter in Upper Darby 95 9. The Wig 106 10. Supercow 124 11. Romaine 141 12. The Auction 156 13. Preparations for the Shedding of Blood 173 14. The Passion of Estelle Jordan 189 15. Peace 206 e Darby Chronicles e Dogs of March A Little More an Kin Whisper My Name e Passion of Estelle Jordan Live Free or Die Spoonwood Howard Elman’s Farewell Guide to the Darby Chronicles <erniehebert.com> N Runs more or less INTERSTATE E Parallel to the W Connecticut 91 River on the S Vermont Side Original site of Cooty’s Cabin Site of former Abare’s Folly Basketville sign Mountain and Jordan shacks Great Meadow Village New Hampshire Vermont DARBY DEPOT Rte. 12 to Keene Site of PLC Project Ike’s Cutter Place Auction Barn Trust Lands Elman Place Grace Pond Dorne Place River Connecticut CENTER DARBY McCurtin Hillary Farm Place Town Trust Lands Hall RIVER DARBY Downed Elm Turner Primeval Forest Tree House Sandbank Jordan Place Latour’s Spoonwood Cabin UPPER DARBY Trust Lands Trust Lands Salmon Ledges Estate and 1-Mile where Birch Cooty’s was born Cabin 1 A Voice The Witch stepped out onto the second-story landing from her apartment in the auction barn, and lit her corncob pipe. Usu­ ally, she didn't smoke until the sun was falling over the hills, but at changes of seasons she might draw down half a bowl before lunch, not enough to get her stoned, just enough to put a halo of yellow around things. Another Jordan might have turned to the bottle, but not the Witch. She hated booze. It was sewage, running through the Jordan bloodlines like shit in a stream. With a wave of her hand she made as if to shoo the spring breeze as it caressed her skin. She didn't trust touch, even a touch from nature; every touch was a frisk, somebody wanting something. Not a house in sight—glad for that. Fields, trees, even the air—greening up. All of Darby, all of Tucker- man County—greening up. Oppressive. To distract herself from the green, she invited the toke to sharpen the sounds of the countryside: birds (yammering like cheapskates), the wind (ambling through the trees like a satisfied pickpocket), the highway (moaning as if the rub of tires hurt), and, finally, a tractor-trailer truck (swearing slowly through its gears). She watched it chug over the hill and then down onto the straight­ away that ran past the auction barn. It picked up speed and vanished into new foliage. Its power sent a subtle trembling through her, and without thinking about it she ran her hands 1 Hebert_9781611686289.pdf 3 6/25/2014 12:19:55 PM ERNEST HEBERT across her blouse and down to her hips, as she might when posing for a customer. ("I like a man with a bulge in his billfold," she would say.) Her eyes swept back along the highway. The road and the sky were milky and yellow in the late-morning light. Every­ thing else was green or becoming green. She sucked on her pipe. Her eye stopped roaming an instant before her mind registered a thought: something wrong, nature's makeup smudged. A gleam in the trees, a black-and-silvery gleam. What did it matter to her? She turned away and walked down the wooden staircase. It shuddered under her footfalls. Like everything else built by Jordan men, it was rickety, whacked together, barely functional. Piled against the barn were discarded electric stoves and refrigerators. It had been a couple of years since her son Ike had died—shot to death by an unknown assailant—but his son Critter had yet to move everything out, even though he had closed down Ike's auction business. The Witch guessed the white goods would be there long after she was gone. The four-wheel-drive Subaru she'd absconded with when old man Williamson died was the only car in the parking lot. The mud was drying out. Soon it would be dusty. She wished Critter would pave it. She decided to have a look at the garden before leaving. It hid behind some briars. Delphina Jordan, Critter's wife, had broken the soil here, raising tomatoes, peas, green beans, and summer squash. The Witch grew only one crop, marijuana. Old man Williamson, who had been opposed to her vice, nonetheless had advised her how to plant it. "You put the toke in the ground when you put the tomatoes in the ground, day after Memorial Day, when the danger of a killing frost has passed." The sight of the garden, dark and moist, awaiting her hand, changed her inside, tore away the protective shield of her anger. She was all soft now—could be hurt. She had to resist 2 Hebert_9781611686289.pdf 4 6/25/2014 12:19:55 PM THE PASSION OF ESTELLE JORDAN an impulse to kneel in the dirt. She remembered a young, shabby girl, violated, weighed down with children, bone-weary from hours in a shoe shop. She could see that poor girl now, shaking, lonely, sick to her stomach from ugliness (although at the time she didn't know that's what it was that sickened the human heart: ugliness). She remembered the stink of the shop. It soaked her clothes, infiltrated the pores of her skin. The stink was a mixture of smells, the burnt smell of raw leather, the acid smell that was the ache of machines, the nauseating smell that was the toil of human bodies. She had turned to the factory to get away from whoring. Oliver had said, "Go ahead. Try some real work for a change." Six months later, defeated by the shoe shop, she went back to her profes­ sion. After that any physically demanding labor filled her with loathing and sadness. But when old man Williamson had in­ troduced her to gardening, he had made the work seem like exercise or play, even worship, an activity to make a person affectionate, strong, whole. With Williamson's spirit in mind, she'd made all sorts of plans to raise vegetables when she moved into the auction barn. But when she'd felt the raw touch of the earth, all the work fears returned, so she planted only what she needed. The Witch knew something was wrong from the moment her car pulled out of the long driveway of the auction barn onto the state road. She felt more than saw the flash of black and silver, the way she felt betrayal in a man's eyes in the split second before he raised his hand to strike her. It was the same black-and-silver gleam she'd seen in the woods from the land­ ing, a black Trans Am, the kind young men drove. It had been waiting for her, and as soon as she had turned toward Tuck- erman, it had jumped on her tail. She drove on, watching in the rearview mirror. The Trans Am kept a distance, just far enough away so she could not see 3 Hebert_9781611686289.pdf 5 6/25/2014 12:19:55 PM ERNEST HEBERT the face of the driver. She speeded up. The Trans Am speeded up. She slowed. The Trans Am slowed. She felt almost as if she controlled it, even while she understood it controlled her, since it was the Trans Am (her mind welded car to driver) that chose the measure of distance between them.