Lights on the Mountain

by Cheryl Anne Tuggle

  And there was fish for dinner.

  Margit Busco’s grandsons, Lester and David, were well grown boys now, men if you believed the draft board. The younger one, David, had been to the creek that morning and snagged a huge brown trout he had then brought to Gracie. To please her father, Gracie had made it the main course. This rankled, for Gracie knew (and he knew that she knew) how much Jess hated fish. In preparation for pretending to be all right with it, he drank two glasses of whiskey before dinner.

  During the meal, Darya and Gracie sat with their chairs pulled close together, talking in Russian. Ivan sat next to the girl, keeping her plate (“No fish? You are sure? Well, have some more potatoes then.”) and his own filled. The girl ate hungrily, but quietly—unaware, or unconcerned, that she was the subject of their talk. Gracie’s hands were flying the way they only did when she was excited. Seeing her so animated made Jess jealous, glum to be reminded that he was not the only one who could add such a spark to her eye. Put by the whiskey in a mood to quietly sulk, he reached across the table for the wine and filled his glass to the rim. In a single long swallow, he drained it. Their voices floated up to his ear a good deal easier now, as if from a fog-draped lake. It would take another glass or two, though, to be fully soothed. He shoved his plate aside and reached for the bottle—a clumsy jerk of his arm that knocked his wine glass against the bottle. There was the clank and tinkle of glass against glass followed by a thud, as the bottle fell with a clatter against the table, and then silence. The sudden hushing of Morozovs.

  Instantly there followed a bustle of activity. Darya began to rearrange her napkin in her lap, and Ivan reached quickly for the fish platter, sticking his fork into the trout’s staring head. In a single motion he slid it onto his plate and fell to eating. He nodded to the girl, who had gone very still, winked his right eye, and made a motion with his fork to show her that it was all right for her to eat.

  Jess was not soothed now. He was surly. He turned to Gracie, casting her a dark look.

  “Well?”

  She shot back a dark look of her own.

  “Well what?”

  “Well, what have you all decided?”

  “Decided?” Her eyes flashed yellow. A warning.

  Bolstered by the wine, Jess ignored it.

  “Yes, decided,” Jess said, drawing his words out, so she wouldn’t miss the sarcasm. “You’ve been at it all evening. Looking her up and down, talking her over like three old cabbage-eaters haggling at a county fair. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s a girl, not a goat.”

  Gracie’s lips pinched. She went pale. She laid her napkin across her plate and pushed her chair back.

  “What on earth is wrong with you, Jess? Are you drunk?”

  “No,” Jess said, after thinking it over. The whiskey had been before dinner. A single glass of wine. He was not exactly sober, but hardly drunk. “Why?”

  “Because you’d better hope you are. Because if you can say such things sober …”

  Jess stared at her in wonder, the fog clearing from his head. It was a strange, strange thing to draw such ire from Gracie. There was a tinge of concern in her voice too, below the anger, and he was suddenly sorry he had put it there. But before he could begin in any kind of earnest to undo what was done, the dog rose from the floor and groaned anxiously, a long, low whine.

  “Hush,” someone said, and a half second later Tsura’s eyes rolled back in her skull, showing the whites. She was on the floor then, her long, thin body limp.

  Doc Bloom came, the grizzled, ill-tempered old doctor who had delivered both Walter and Jess at home. And who, because he liked to drive his old bat-winged Cadillac deadly fast through the hills and curves, still made emergency house calls.

  Doc felt Tsura’s pulse and took her blood pressure, listened soberly to her heart and lungs, and shined a light into each of her wide, dark eyes, speaking to her in a gentler, more grandfatherly tone than it was his custom to use, the one he saved for delicate old ladies and very ill children. Then, when he had finished and was folding his stethoscope into his bag, he turned to Gracie and said, “She’s anemic. I’ve taken blood to test the levels. But that’s just for my files. Nothing serious, anyway. I can see that looking at her. She’s just a mite undernourished. You feed her on beef liver and turnip greens, and she’ll be feeling stronger in no time. Some of that good Hazel Valley milk wouldn’t hurt either, to flesh out her bones. Full fat, all the cream and butter she wants.”

  Jess walked Doc out to his car, and opened the door for him. The old man slid in and worked his paunch behind the wheel, cussing a blue streak the whole time. “Better ask Gracie to come in and see me at my office tomorrow, Jesse,” he said, finally reaching for the key, still in the ignition. “I’ve a pretty good hunch she’s expecting.”

  Next morning Jess drove Gracie into town, to see Doc Bloom at his office. After the examination, when they had got back in the car to drive home, Jess turned sideways a little in his seat to look at Gracie. The only words she had spoken to him since the night before had been short and cool. And she hadn’t said anything since Doc had confirmed his suspicions and given them the news.

  “You still mad at me?”

  Gracie didn’t answer. She only blessed herself, drawing a long, slow cross.

  “No, I’m not mad,” she said at last. Her eyes were soft gold, filled with awe. “You know, Jess, I’ve wondered for a little while—and then yesterday, a wispy little fluttering, like the hatching of a moth.”

  She went on: “And I wanted to tell you last night, but you were so—Jess, did you hear it? A heart no bigger than a raindrop, Doc said—but what a sound! I don’t think I’ll ever be angry again. At you, or anyone else. It would be blasphemy.”

  In the glow of her own happiness, Gracie asked Tsura to stay at the farm, and seemed as pleased to have her as if she were family, a beloved sister or cousin. Jess, on the other hand, was not pleased at all. He could not claim she was any trouble, of course. No more than a stray cat or dog would be, anyway. And since he couldn’t explain, could in no way say to Gracie, “It’s the eyes. I can’t take ’em,” he stayed a safe distance from Tsura, and kept his uneasiness to himself.

  12

  WE HAVE NUNS,” Gracie said, at lunch one Sunday afternoon, hanging up the kitchen phone. She turned away from the wall and looked at Jess, her face alight. She glowed these days, since learning of her pregnancy, but there was something other than that happiness in her expression now. It was a look Jess couldn’t define, other than to think it was part soberness, part joy.

  “Nuns,” he repeated, feeling that he should say something. She had spoken with such an air of importance, as if she’d been the first to tell him something he had been dying to hear.

  “Yes, nuns,” she said, with an impatient little nod. “They’ve bought Orville and Zodie’s place at Mill Bend. The abbess is from the Romanian nobility. Maybe even the royal family. That’s what Mama heard. Anyway, they were all exiled. The chaplain was in the camps, Mama said. He’s suffered.”

  “How nice,” Jess said drily, unable to help the sarcasm, for he saw how Gracie’s eyes shined as she talked of the poor priest who was likely to have been tortured, had surely been beaten, starved. Lord, how Russians loved suffering! Why nuns were such a celebration was only more for Jess to try and fathom. Of course, the only nun he had ever known was the teacher Mike had for seventh grade at Sacred Heart School. Sister Vittoria was a tall, straight-faced woman with upright posture and a purposeful stride, who walked about town both summer and winter wearing thick, black stockings and sturdy, crepesoled shoes. Creep-soul, Mike called the shoes, insisting that was her whole purpose for wearing them. Jess had never actually met Sister Vittoria, though Mike had pointed her out to him once at the deli, but he knew none of the Latona kids cared for her. So, while Gracie was clearly thrilled to have nuns about, he did not think he should be blamed too much for failing to share her joy.

  Gracie soon began to go out to Mill Ben
d and visit the monastery regularly, taking Tsura with her, the two of them bearing gifts of fresh milk and cream and a bounty of corn and tomatoes and cucumbers from the garden. Jess could hardly protest, for there was plenty. And Gracie glowed for days after those visits with a peace he could bask in.

  13

  TSURA STOOD IN THE CREEK one afternoon, cold water swirling around her bare knees. She had just spied a crayfish. She reached down, and pinching it gently between her fingers, lifted it up to her face so she could look it in its funny eye. The crayfish whipped its tail back and forth, flicking her skin with long whiskers. Suddenly a voice called from the bank.

  “Looks like we had the same idea.”

  It was Jess and Gracie’s neighbor David Busco. She had seen him coming through the woods as she crossed the field. As plain as if she had asked him to join her, he sat down and took off his shoes, tossing them over his shoulder, where they landed somewhere in the grass, out of sight. When the shoes were gone, he bent over and began to roll up the legs of his blue jeans. Tsura lowered the crayfish to the stream, opening her grasp. It made for the nearest rock and vanished in a puff-cloud of silt. The boy had crept barefoot along the bank until he had found a good, wide place. Now he was leaping into the air like an old bullfrog, landing on his feet in the stream.

  “Yikes!” he yelled. “Lots colder than I remembered. Are you used to it yet?”

  Tsura didn’t answer. She curled her toes, pushing them deeper into the mud. He was fording the stream now, passing through the deep pool in the middle, getting wet up to his waist, paddling the eddies with his big flat hands. Up onto the bar he went, down into the shallows. Careful as a buck deer, he picked his way across the rocks, came right over to where she stood. So close she could smell him.

  Her sense of smell was keen. She always knew by the scent left behind when a raccoon had been sifting the garbage pile or a possum had stopped by the chicken yard. Eli had smelled of lye soap. Unless he was in one of his spells, then he grew rank. And though it had been fainter as the years passed, the brown silk dress she used to take out from the trunk now and then, to feel its softness like a caress, had never stopped smelling of lilacs. She had often held it to her nose, inhaling sweet memories not her own. Exhaling the darker ones that tried to linger. This boy’s pungent odor confused her nostrils. It was sharp, but good, too, like pine sap. She stared at the water.

  “You just never shut up, do you?” he said, looking closely at her.

  His eyes were friendly and eager, bright blue stars against his tanned, freckled skin. Suddenly he winked. She realized then that he’d been teasing her, and she smiled. He moved closer. Tsura stayed very still. The cold mud sucked at her feet and made them ache. But she hated to pull them out. His shoulder was almost touching hers, he stood so near.

  “Ever fish this crick before?”

  “Yah. Lots of times.”

  “I’ve got string and hooks in my pocket and a jar of worms over under that tree. We could wet a line.”

  Tsura relaxed. “Too late for that, I think,” she said, pointing to his soaked blue jeans.

  David worked his hand into the wet pocket of his pants and brought out a soggy knot of string. He squeezed the water from it, flashing her a wide, sheepish grin. “What I meant was, do you want to go down there where it’s deeper? Sit on the root of that big sycamore and see what bites? I’ve got a fair-sized trout out of that pool more than once.”

  “Yah, okay.”

  He reached out and took her by the hand, as naturally as if they were old friends and not a boy and girl who until now had been acquainted only by waves of their hands from a distance. He kept her easily balanced as they walked, making their way over to the tree roots that jutted out from the bald creek bank.

  “’Course,” he said, “we’d do better with bread-balls, or corn, if we wanted to catch trout. Bluegill ain’t bad eating, though. You just need a pretty big mess of ’em to make a meal.”

  “Oh, yah. Bluegills is good eating. For sure,” Tsura agreed, though she did not eat fish herself. It was Pat Badger who said bluegill—sunfish, he called them—made a plenty good dinner if you fried ’em up crisp in a pan. He would have liked her to do that, she knew, fry some fish up in a pan, instead of grazing on what she could gather in her hands as she walked through the woods and fields. But she had lived a pretty long time, eighteen years, without making a meal of anything she had ever, even once, looked in the eye.

  When they had reached the spreading roots of the big sycamore, he kept hold of her hand until she climbed up and sat down. Once she was seated, wringing the water from her skirt, he swung himself up beside her. He unwound the ball, patiently untangling the strings from the hooks. Steam rose from their wet clothing in the heat. Tsura was silent, gazing at her feet. Her toenails were black with creek mud.

  He began tying the first line, forehead knotted in concentration. When the hooks were tied, he reached into a canvas bag at the base of the tree and pulled out a half-pint jelly jar full of dirt and fat night crawlers. He lifted a smallish one from the jar and deftly wadded it around the hook. Tsura looked away. It was only a worm, but she did not wish to see it impaled on a hook.

  “How old are you?” he asked, covering the worm with his hand, as if he had understood that it bothered her to see it squirm and writhe.

  “Eighteen.”

  “You look older,” he said. And then, “I’m going away soon.”

  “Yah, I know. I heard Gracie and Jess talking something about it.”

  “Oh, yeah? What did they say?”

  “Just that you will go to the war.”

  “I’ve been drafted. That’s when you don’t have a choice. You just get to go for a soldier.”

  “Yah. I know.”

  “You know everything. Do you like a switch, or do you just want to dangle the line from your fingers?”

  “I don’t care. Both is different from the way I fish, usually.”

  “How do you fish, usually?”

  “Like this,” Tsura said, grinning. She pretended to net a fish with her hands.

  Still holding the line, he looked at her sharply, skeptically, then admiringly. “Well,” he said, handing her the string, “maybe you can teach me how to do it your way some other time. That seems like work, and I’m feeling awfully relaxed right now. Believe I’d like a switch.”

  He took out a slim pocket knife and opened it. From down near the feet of the tree, he cut a slender branch. Using the knife, he made a small green wound near the end, and then fitting the string, with baited hook dangling, into the slot, he tied a knot to hold it in place. He handed the makeshift rod over to Tsura, then repeated the process with his own line, dropping it into the water and leaning back against the sycamore’s wide trunk.

  Tsura scooted back in the same way he had done, until she rested next to him. She bobbed her pole a little to check the tension in her line and found it was slack. She stole a sideways glance at him. He was looking at her through half-closed eyes.

  “That’s some hair you got,” he said dreamily. “The exact color of ripe mulberries.”

  “My father was a soldier,” she said, to deflect the remark. She felt the sting of blood in her cheeks and did not wish him to know how much it had pleased her.

  “I thought the Amish were against war,” he said. “That’s what my grandmother says, anyway. But she doesn’t care much for the Amish. Claims they’ve got everybody swindled with their quaint old ways.” He grinned, closing his eyes. “I’ve got a hunch she’s really only sore at one or two. Those that have cut in on her fruit-stand business.”

  Tsura turned to gaze at him. His eyelashes were long, white, and spiky and made her think of dandelion seeds. “Amish are against war,” she said. “But Eli is not my father. He is not Amish, neither. Not for a long time.”

  “Either.”

  “What?”

  “You said Eli was not Amish, neither. You should say either.”

  “Either,” Tsura said ob
ediently.

  He sat up then and looked directly at her, curiosity sparking in his eyes.

  “Well, that explains a lot. You talk Amish, but you sure don’t act it. Or look it—neither,” he grinned. “How come you lived up in that creepy house with Zook, if he wasn’t your old man?”

  “My old man?”

  “Your father.”

  “Oh.”

  Tsura jerked her line and sat up, peering soberly into the pool. She tried to look surprised to see that the worm still dangled from the hook.

  “You got a bite?”

  “Nah,” she said, slyly, leaning back. “Just a little minnow, chipping at the worm.”

  “Oh. Well, there’s lots more worms in that jar, if you need to rebait.”

  Just as she had designed, he forgot his earlier question. He leaned back again, closing his eyes.

  “You ever been out to McConnell’s Mill?” he asked lazily. “Seen the gorge? Or the falls at Hell’s Hollow?”

  “I never been nowhere,” Tsura said. “Just here. Eli went sometimes to town, in the truck. But he don’t take me.”

  David peeled back one eyelid and observed her for a long moment, then closed it again without speaking. Tsura went back to tending her line.

  Eli. Some days her heart felt so heavy she could hardly lift her feet to walk. She missed him that much. Other times she remembered his bad spells and her bones felt bird-hollow.

  Last night she had seen him in a dream. He lay on his back in a field of red-eared wheat. All around the field were his people, cutting the wheat by hand, and there was Eli in their midst, fast asleep. Though they seemed not to be careful of him—the men swung their sharp-bladed scythes in great sweeping arcs, sometimes awfully close to his head—she somehow knew they would not harm him.

  Tsura peeked at David. He appeared to be dozing now, his fishing pole rigged between his knees in such a way that he would wake up should a fish decide to take the bait.