RATTLER HUNG HIS HEAD with shame, because the worn old dress was no thing worthy of Prairie. But with all her pretty new clothes burned up at the Pollitt house, this dress was all he had to offer, his dead mama’s Sunday dress that she wore until she quit getting dressed at all. He should have got shut of it. Should have burnt up all his mama’s things when she died. Instead he’d scrubbed the house down to raw wood-floors, walls, ceilings-he’d scrubbed away the coughing and moaning of her last months and he’d scrubbed away the memories of her face swoll up from his daddy’s fist and he’d scrubbed away every long-ago morning she turned him out to run wild through Trashtown so she could take her cure.
The box of her things stayed sealed up neat in the closet upstairs. Rattler would drive it to the dump. He would get new clothes for Prairie; her new clothes would hang in the closet just so. Prairie would do woman things to the house, curtains and fancy soap and such. That was not a job for Rattler, but he’d scrubbed until the skin rubbed off his knuckles and he’d split and stacked the wood and beat the rugs and caned the chairs and rubbed the dust from the lamps.
The shirt Prairie wore was too hot for June and she didn’t have nothing else with her. Prairie had come to him with nothing and that was as it should be. Before long, Prairie would shed the city like a king snake sheds its skin; her hair would get long and her green eyes would grow bright again for him.
“Put it on, girl,” Rattler said roughly, holding the worn dress out to her. He hated to see her standing so straight and still in his kitchen in the warm evening, sweat on her brow, her shirt buttoned up to her neck. He would buy a fan. He would buy a fan for every window. “Ain’t much but it’ll keep you cool. We’ll go to town soon and git you things.”
“I don’t need anything,” she said, not looking at him. Crazy talk. This was her home now; she should be looking at her new cups and plates and her new silver chest that had been his mama’s. She should be thinking where did she want the chairs, the dish drainer, the broom. She didn’t look at any of her new things. Didn’t notice the flowers in the jar on the table, the cloth from so long ago Rattler didn’t know who had stitched it, which he took out of the hutch just for her.
Rattler sighed and bunched the old dress in his fist. He would throw out his mother’s things. He would pour Prairie a glass of water. He would tell her to fetch him a shined apple, rub his knotted-up shoulders, sing him one of the old songs. He would make her sit down. He would make her mind him. He would see himself in her wide green eyes.
Rattler looked at Prairie and he didn’t know what to do.