Miss Sally

By Robert Joe Stout

This is the vivid portrait of a young girl's deeply moving initiation into womanhood: the discovery of sex without hope of love, and grief without the release of tears. The setting is rural Texas in the 1930s, a rough and tumble environment in which the thirteen-year-old Sally Halm questions but tries to appease her authoritarian mother's religiosity, appeasement that leads to misguided attempts to seek a salvation that her environment ruptures
Following the tradition of realistic sexual coming of age novels like those of John Steinbeck and Erskine Caldwell, Miss Sally struggles to reconcile the concepts of "sin" and "salvation" that seem to dominate her life as she ricochets between hope and rejection. Inspired by the testimony of a woman evangelist who recounted rising from degradation to achieve happiness and prosperity thanks to accepting Jesus as her personal savior Sally tries to emulate her but realizes "everything I do I do backwards, I can't even sin without people laughing at me." 

Sent to live with relatives in another part of central Texas, Sally becomes infatuated with an older cousin whom she helps to milk cows and to breed a mare. Though supportive he's a man who seems to hate himself, a hard drinker who has no use for religion and prefers the company of prostitutes than that of "churchy people." Again Sally does things backwards and alienates him as she's alienated others. Her decision to run away from family, from the life she's leading and has led, thrusts her into even greater entanglements, entanglements that make her realize how difficult it is to have one's immortal soul saved, even when that's all that one has left.
A reviewer cautioned, "An unforgettable novel. You'll love Miss Sally, but she'll break your heart."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Joe Stout
• Release date: Feb 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386207276

Book preview

Miss Sally

Robert Joe Stout

This e-book edition was first published in 2017

First published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1973

Portions of this book appeared in the Wisconsin Review, copyright © 1972 by the Wisconsin Review, and Descant, copyright © 1973 by Texas Christian University

For Lynne

As you know I am Hilary Halm’s sister but even as children we weren’t much alike. I was dumb she was smart. She was tall, I was squat. When she lost her two front teeth everybody clapped their hands and gave her presents-she was that cute. Me they called Piggy, Piggy! and told me to close my mouth. Big-shouldered, like my father, all and long-legged, she had hair the color of honey and eyes, hat Momma called sweet-blue. She wore glasses from the time she started school but I don’t remember anybody teasing her about them. Me, they teased me all the time. I used to wet my pants, for one thing. And suck my thumb and spill wash water and get lice from the chickens. Nothing like that ever happened to Hill’ry (that’s the way we pronounced her name), though once she fell down the back steps and jabbed a wire through her cheek. She never did get rid of the scar but on her it looked saintly. As you might imagine.

During the First World War, we lived in a tarpaper shack fifth from the street in a line of tarpaper shacks but I don’t remember where Daddy worked at the time, in a sawmill maybe. After the war, he got a job in town and we moved into an old frame house on Mesquite Street. It was saggy and weather-worn but big enough for all of us. I was the fourth oldest of the eight kids, Hill’ry was a year younger than me), and as I remember we were happy there. Then when I was eleven we moved to Austin, thirty miles away. Hill’ry and I shared a bedroom (and a dislike for Judy, our older sister, who was bossy and thought we were pests). By the time I was thirteen and Hill’ry twelve we were the very closest of friends.

For some reason, I guess because she was smart, Hill’ry got excused from the household chores like washing dishes, scrubbing, gathering eggs that Momma made me and Judy do. Judy had to sing in the church choir besides and go with them to the old folks’ homes and jails, then come home and work half the night ironing Daddy’s workshirts and pants. Poor Judy! By the time she was fifteen she had a boyfriend but Momma and Daddy wouldn’t let her go anywhere with him. George Mixon was short and husky and had very black hair; his father worked for the railroad. One Sunday, when Hill’ry and I saw Judy leave through the back gate (we had a chickenwire fence on both sides of our yard and a big vacant field behind us), we decided t0 sneak along behind her. It was spring, dry and dusty; the scrubbly little trees behind the Allmans’ barn were just leafing into greenish-gray lace. Judy cut across the field and disappeared into the thick growth. She looked back over her shoulder several times but Hill’ry and I stayed close to the fence where she couldn’t see us. When she was out of sight we hurried to the back of the Allmans’ lot and crawled through the fence.

Just as I started to bound forward Hill’ry grabbed my arm.

Shhh!

That’s ... George! I almost blurted before Hill’ry pinched me. He and Judy seemed to be around the corner of a sturdy board shed that the Allmans didn’t use anymore. It was locked and the path leading to it from the house was overgrowµ with bristly weeds. We crawled as close as we dared.

Anybody see you? I heard George ask. No, I was careful.

C’mon, lie down here.

George, not so ... fast, it hurts when you start out so fast.

Waitin’ so long makes me anxious, that’s all.

I got here as quick as I could. I had to finish doing the dishes.

C’mon.

Just ... oh, all right, wait, let me take them off.

I looked at Hill’ry. She was crouching by the edge of the shed, her eyes so excited she couldn’t keep them focused. I knew what Judy and George were going to do and yet I didn’t. Hill’ry put her finger to her lips and edged closer (she wanted to peek around the side of the shed). But her foot hit a piece of rotten board and it cracked and she went Oouu! out-loud.

What’s that? What the hell’s that?

I scrambled to my feet to run away as fast as I could but Hill’ry stood right where she was. I grabbed her hand to pull her away but George had already seen us. He shouted something, I can’t remember what. I was too startled by the sight of him and Judy to hear.

From waist to ankle he was naked. I’m sure I’d never seen

a man with his organ swollen the way his was. I pushed both hands against my mouth and gasped. His lips contracted against his teeth. Get outta here!

Judy pulled her blouse together and jumped up beside him. You followed me! she hissed. Hill’ry nodded. A shiver went through Judy’s shoulders. All right, c’mon. If Momma asks anything I’ll say we just went for a walk. She wiggled back into her brassiere and rebuttoned her blouse. And if you tell anybody, if either of you breathes one word, I’ll kill you, so help me!

But just as she grabbed Hill’ry to lead her back, George grabbed her. His lips were twitching but his movement was quick and purposeful. No, he grunted, you can’t run off, leavin’ me this way.

Judy twisted to face him. He hadn’t tried to pull his pants back on and his organ seemed to have shriveled and become thicker. He rubbed it with his hand, keeping the other around Judy’s shoulder. A shadow clouded her face and settled there, deep and dark like something that had physical weight. Finally, she nodded and released Hill’ry’s arm. All right, she whispered sharply, but without real authority, Go on home. And if you tell one single soul ...!

Hill’ry started back through the brush, ducking low limbs and snarled growth as she ran. I followed but glanced back at Judy as I rounded the shed. She had turned to face George; his hands were on her shoulders, his face bent close to hers. She closed her eyes and for just a moment I saw her silhouetted against the gray-limbed, lacy spring growth. Oh! I know I gasped because George’s head jerked toward me. Oh! again and I whirled and fled.

But beside the fence I stopped and tried to picture what was happening to Judy. Ahead of me I could hear Hill’ry crashing through the brush. They’ll think we’re together (I’m sure the Devil put that thought into my head). Slowly I turned and started back. But instead of sneaking up like Hill’ry and I had done before, I crawled around a different way and stretched up from my knees to peer over the matted bushes.

George had Judy beneath him on the ground. Her skinny white knees were lifted and his rump was between them. Her face was turned watching the shed but her hands were around his hips and she seemed to be pulling him toward her.

I ducked forward and pressed my hands over my eyes. Again, I pictured George as he’d stood beside Judy, his legs bare except for the black hair all over his thighs, his organ swollen and protruding. I knew the Devil was prompting me but I had to look again, I couldn’t really believe that he’d gotten that whole big thing up inside my sister. She had moved her knees and pulled her hands up under his shirt. She lifted her chin, still watching the shed, as spasms shook his back and shoulders. He moved a few more times, slowly, then stopped. Judy straightened her legs but held onto him tighter than before. A wispy little smile crossed her lips and she nodded. Apparently, he’d whispered something to her. I slid down among the bushes and lay there until I heard them get up and move away.

D’ya think they’ll tell? George was saying.

Maybe.

What’ll your ol’lady do?

Not let me see you anymore. Jesus!

Would you care, George?

Jesus! Sure I would, Judy. I love you, Judy.

It’s not just ... doing what we were doing?

Jeez, no! I, heck, I wouldn’t do it unless ...

Even if she does tell I’ll sneak out somehow. Run away if I have to.

Jesus, Judy, I love you!

I put my face into my hands and closed my eyes again. For a long time, I lay there, thinking. Not real thoughts, just pictures. Judy and the way she’d tilted her head when George had grabbed her and said she couldn’t run off and leave him that way. Her hands around his back when he was through with her. A puppy that had rolled over on its back and stuck its little red organ out while I scratched its stomach. My father’s fist around my arm as he swung me across his knee to spank me and my screaming and his shouting and hurting me more until finally I gave up and lay prone and listless, absorbing the blows, letting him wear himself out before I crawled off, sniveling but trying to hold my chin up and walk straight like it hadn’t hurt...

When I got back to the house Momma was getting after Judy for ... runnin’ off jis when I need help. Ordinarily Judy would have snapped back but this time she drew herself up and didn’t say anything. She twisted her head to look at me and I felt a little surge of fear and power. I really believed she’d kill me if I told, yet I sensed that she was as scared of me as I was of her. But before I could gloat or swagger Momma lit into me. It was all I could do to jump out of the way and not get my · rear end tanned. We were all going to church, I was told; there was a special evangelist in from San Diego, California, that she wanted me to hear. Get a move on, now! ’S time I got some help around here! Judy! I thought I told ...! And so on.

We walked to church (it was about twenty blocks but everybody walked in those days and on Sunday nights you’d pass people all dressed up who were going to different churches than you were). Judy had gone early because the choir had to practice some new songs for the evangelist and my older brother Paul was off working and didn’t get back in time to go but the rest of us, Daddy and Momma and Jim and me and Hill’ry and the three younger boys, Lu and Ron and Bill, all were together. We arrived a little late and I had to sit way down front. (So many people came that night, I remember, that some of them had to stand in back and along the side aisles and a lot of little kids and babies were whimpering and crying all the time the evangelist was speaking.)

He was short, stocky, slightly balding man with blond eyebrows and slightly protuberant eyes and he walked with a dignified soldierly limp although he was only about thirty-five or forty years old. He sang beautifully, a delicate but powerful tenor; the songs seemed to rise and expand and reverberate through the unornamented rectangular building. Judy stood right behind him, her thin little hands folded across her white Bible. (All the girls in the choir were wearing white dresses and they all had red ribbons in their hair.) While she sang, Judy watched the evangelist and now and then glanced down at Mrs. Perreault, who played the accompaniment on the old piano, or at the half -opened windows along the side of the room. Between songs she blinked at the ceiling, her mouth puckered into a detached, unconscious smile. As though, I thought, she were underneath George watching the corner of the Allmans’ shed. I shivered so hard Momma noticed. Shh! she whispered. I nodded but a minute later I must have shivered again. Or was it for something else her elbow smacked my ribs?

Hill’ry, on the other side of me, had her chin between her hands. Now and then she’d pull her pencil from inside the binding of her Bible and scribble something on the margin or on an old Sunday school paper. As usual it was in code and very tiny so nobody but me could read it. The evangelist had finished his prayer and was leaning over the homemade portable pulpit speaking softly, seriously, about some of the things that were going on in the world.

You could be in a picture show tonight, couldn’t you? You could be pushing your chairs back from a big dinner, lightin’ up cigars and leaning back in your chairs to talk about politics or baseball or what the weather was doing or what it was going to do. Why did you bother to come here, to this plain little room, where some of you can’t even find a place to sit down? Why?

The word floated softly, like lingering notes of music, across the quiet room. A few chairs scraped, a baby squeaked and was shushed by its mother. Just as people were getting impatient, wondering who among them was going to answer, the evangelist raised his fist. You heard Jesus calling? he asked in his musician’s voice.

AAA-men! yes’ brother, AAA-men ...

His fist crashed across the echoes so hard the pulpit wood crackled. Or were you afraid? he shouted. "Deep in yourself knowing you are a sinner before Jesus? Because I tell you Brethren, if you weren’t afraid! you are in danger, danger! brothers, you’re at the very gates of Hell! What does the Bible teach? the lesson read here tonight? That ye shall fear God, fear Him! do you hear me, do you hear?"

He waited for the chorus of yea’s and amen’s and banged the pulpit again. "God wants you to be afraid! Yes, brother and sister, He wants you to fear Him! As you lift that vial of alcohol saying, ‘one-little-drink-won’t-hurt, nobody-ever’ll-know,’ right then He wants you to tremble with fear! As the serpent’s temptation to cheat or steal or fornicate sneaks through you, He wants you to fall on your knees in agony! Listen to me, brothers! You are God’s creatures, you have choice! God wants you to be so afraid that you fling yourself onto your knees and pray for help! That’s faith, brothers! that’s belief, yea brothers! that’s SAL-va-tion!"

Beneath the onslaught of his shouting, words so true I felt them leap through my eyes like flashes of light, my remembrances of Judy and George writhed and jumped and wiggled. The room seemed to be in an uproar around me (I cannot remember faces, only the tumult); behind the revivalist’s upraised fist, turned slightly to one side, like a photograph, was Judy’s pale, Esther-like face.

Suddenly I wasn’t sitting on the edge of my folding chair anymore. Who among you is afraid? the revivalist shrilled, both hands raised above his head, just as my thin, excited voice shouted my sister’s name. I think she heard me despite the continued shouting, "Who here is a-fraid! Enough to fall onto his knees at this altar and accept Jeessus as his Savior?"

There were others on their feet—I’m sure there were—but I was closest to the front. Judy’s name froze on my lips. The revivalist’s thick, scrubbed hand gestured me forward. Beside me I heard Momma gasp. Hill’ry, on the other side, twisted around and wrinkled her nose. Just behind me I heard an old voice croak, Go on chile, go up thayr. The revivalist called louder and pumped his arm at the choir to get them to singing. Judy lifted her head and added her soprano to the martial, beckoning chorus. Abruptly I plopped back onto the chair, surprised that it was me and not Judy who had jumped up to be saved.

Let us pray! the revivalist shouted, "pray for those who, tonight, in this House of God, feel the call but can’t find in themselves the courage, the fear! Yea, brothers, the fear! To accept Jees-sus, Our Savior! Pray, pray for them with all your hearts, pray that what they cannot do tonight they will do tomorrow night, Yea Lord! We hear Thee Jees-sus! Jees-sus, we are answering! Jees-sus, oh! Lord! Hear us!

Momma’s head was bowed, her chin bobbing in cadence with the revivalist’s shouts. I could no longer see Judy, just the blurred white of the choir’s dresses and the pendulum pounding of the arm that led the prayer. My nerves curled inward like singed thread. I didn’t want to see anything or hear anything or have anyone see or hear me. Just as tears filled my eyes Hill’ry showed me a note she’d printed in tiny letters in the margin of Mark:

Momma would make them get married. Wouldn’t that be rotten pumpkins to have HIM for a brother!

And I blinked and tried to figure out what she meant, and when it dawned on me that she was referring to Judy and George I lost track of what the revivalist was doing. It would be rotten pumpkins, I had to agree. I didn’t like George and Judy hadn’t even finished school. Besides, she was too cross and a crybaby, she wasn’t grown-up enough to get married.

I wanted to run ahead with Hill’ry after the meeting was over, but Momma called me back and made me walk with her and the little boys and Brother Botchlet, who was very religious and had responded to the call and been a preacher for several years when he was younger. Daddy and Jim hung back to talk with some other men. Brother Botchlet was explaining the Holy Ghost. He was small and dapper; he had a little moustache and moved with nervous animation that reminded me of a squirrel.

The Spirit, he said, was all around us, constantly, like the air we breathed. The world we saw with our eyes and felt with our fingers was suspended half way between God and the Devil and they both were working to get our souls: God through the Spirit, and the Devil by luring us away from it by planting all sorts of needs and diversions in our path.

That’s why, he explained, Our Lord Jesus had said it would be as hard for a rich man to get to Heaven as it would for a camel to get through a needle’s eye. The man had to focus so much attention and concentration on making money that he didn’t have time to allow the Spirit to enter him. He looked at me and I nodded and smiled so he’d know that I was listening but I didn’t understand what all this had to do with me, after all I wasn’t rich. He went on and on and every time he or Momma looked at me I bobbed my head. But really, I was thinking about Judy and the way George treated her and why any girl would put up with having that thing stuck inside her and surely all married women like Momma and Joanie Horton, who looked so fresh and tiny and sweet all the time, and the preacher’s wife didn’t let their men do that to them. Did they?

After we’d left Brother Botchlet Momma asked me if I wouldn’t like to sing hymns with her as we continued home, and I said I would but I felt very lonesome and cut off from her and from church, even from the trees and locusts and other sounds that crackled in the twilight. As though, I thought, it were all a great darkness and like a heifer or lamb I was being fed and cleaned so I wouldn’t guess what hid in the night ahead.

Hill’ry was already in bed when I opened the door to our little room. Judy used to sleep with us but we quarreled so much that Momma finally told her she’d have to make do with the livingroom couch. I knelt down to say my prayers but the day had been so long and confusing I didn’t think I could get through them so I decided not to even start. I guess I figured that God had enough to be mad at me about already; one thing more wouldn’t hurt much.

Did you tell Momma? Hill’ry whispered. Tell her what?

About Judy?

Nuh-huh. Anyway, it’s none of my business. Judy sure better treat us good now.

It was kind of sickening.

Her and George, you mean?

I don’t see why she let him do it.

Hill’ry was silent. I thought for a moment she’d gone to sleep. But she cleared her throat and said, She had to. It’s part of the game.

Game?

She giggled. It, well, I’ve been reading about it, keeping the books at school so Momma can’t spy on me. You know about babies, how they get started... She let her voice trail off, not so much asking a question as wondering to herself if, in fact. I did know and I quickly asserted that, after all, I’d lived on a farm and anyway, I was older than she was.

Well, Hill’ry continued, "the boy’s ‘penis,’ it´s called that in the books, when he gets old enough it starts to itch, kind of, that’s when he’s got the stuff to make babies, it itches so bad he can’t think of anything but getting rid of ‘semen,’ that’s what the stuff is called. So he tries and tries to find some girl to let him fuck ..." she whispered and I felt a shiver go through me. I’d never heard her use the word before.

Sometimes he even pays her for it, that’s what a harlot is, like in the Bible, she’s one who takes money for letting whatever men want to fu- but this time she substituted, do what they want to her.

I wouldn’t let no boy do it to me, I interrupted, just because he itched.

Hill’ry didn’t answer immediately. When she did her words seemed to catch in her throat as though something inside were pulling on them while she tried to push them out. Well, no, not just because of that. But you might if ... the game, I mean, I’m just saying why there’s a game. The girl, see, she knows what the boy wants. She doesn’t itch but she doesn’t want to be alone either, or maybe she wants to have little babies or wants a nice house and lots of money so she teases the boy and makes him promise, well, to buy her things or get married to her. Like Momma and Daddy. He has to work to make money to take care of us.

"That’s different, they’re married. Judy

Reviews for Miss Sally

[Anifsa Rosenthal · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Very different . I bought this book at a thrift ya drugstore on the clearance rack for 50 .cents in 1976. Lost it after I’d read it and all these years eBay book stores ive looked for it and then all of a sudden it pops up in book club . Crazy read it .