I replied after a moment that I found that reprehensible, but he seemed not to hear. I felt sure I was white as a sheet. I could see from Tallie’s face that she’d heard this story before. He held forth to Dyer about his hinged harrow, complaining that the spikes that caught the rocks and roots were forever breaking. He told Tallie, once he saw that we had finished eating, to bring the dessert, and I said we were stuffed and she said that he insisted on his pastries and preserved fruits and creams, and rose to clear the table and fetch them. I excused myself to assist her, and in the kitchen I asked in a whisper about her situation and she shushed me with a shake of her head. I asked after a bruise on her neck and she said she’d taken a fall over the fence. I answered with some petulance and anxiety that I hadn’t heard, and she responded that many things had happened to her about which I hadn’t heard.
Back at table her husband’s mood seemed to have darkened. He served the pastries and fruit and creams himself, leaving only her plate empty. “Is your wife being punished?” Dyer joked. And when Finney chose not to answer, Tallie finally said that it was not in her husband’s temper either to give or to receive. He responded that he had lately been sick in the chest, but as she had expressed no feeling for him, he had been hardened.
The entire ride home my speculation was hectic with dread. I was finally able to ask if Dyer had felt anything amiss, but he shook his head while keeping his attention on Old Bill. Along the river he pointed out a flooding so extensive it had carried away the long wooden bridge at Washington; fragments of it, with the railing still erect, came floating down past us. Hard on its heels followed a tree of enormous length with uptorn roots and branches lashing the current. Once we reached our property he remarked with disgust on one of our line fences that he said hadn’t been cleared in all the years I’d been here. I said that it looked perfectly serviceable to me and he said that it looked like a hedge.
Sunday 6 May
No word from Tallie. No visit. A mild and lonesome night. My anxieties cause me between tasks to pace the house like a prisoner. The windows open.
My mother told me once in a fury when I was just a girl that my father asked nothing of her except that she work the garden, harvest the vegetables, pick and preserve the fruit, supervise the poultry, milk the cows, do the dairy work, manage the cooking and cleaning and mending and doctoring, and help out in the fields when needed. She said she’d appeared in his ledger only when she’d purchased a dress. And how have things changed? Daughters are married off so young that everywhere you look a slender and unwilling girl is being forced to stem a sea of tribulations before she’s even full grown in height.
Dyer keeping his distance seeing me in such a state. The night fair and warm with the appearance of a coming rain. A shower.
Sunday 13 May
My heart a maelstrom, my head a bedlam. Tallie gone. This morning the widow Weldon on the way to town reported their house and barn to be abandoned. Rushed over there myself, Dyer galloping along behind and calling to me. Their barn, which I passed first, had been emptied of stock and feed. Their front door was open. Some furniture &c was there but most was gone. A dishtowel lay on the kitchen floor. A spatter of blood spread up the wall above the sink. A handprint of the same marked the lintel above the door.
Furious colloquy with Dyer most of the night about the county sheriff’s office. He promises tomorrow to make the rounds of the neighbors and if unsatisfied to take our fears there.
Monday 14 May
No work. The Nottoways report spotting their caravan on the county road in the late evening on Friday the 4th, heading NW. Dyer said Mrs. Nottoway believed she spied Tallie’s figure alongside her husband’s but was unsure. A hired hand, she thought, was driving the second wagon. The sheriff refuses to investigate. Dyer says if I refuse to calm myself he’ll lash me to a chair and administer laudanum.
Sunday 20 May
I’m a library without books. I’m a sea of agitation and trepidation and grief. Dyer speaks every so often of how much we have for which to be grateful. The two of us sit violently conscious of the ticking of the clock while he continues to weep at what he imagines to be his poor forgotten self.
Sunday 3 June
A letter this Friday, delivered into my hands by the widow Weldon’s son—! In it Tallie apologized for all it could not be. She said she understood that the best of letters were but fractions of fractions. She asked my pardon for having been prevented from offering a proper farewell and regretted that we’d traded one sort of anguish for another.
She said that houses deep in the backwoods always seem to feature something awful and unnatural in their loneliness, and were there only a ruined abbey, the view would be perfect. Their ramshackle roof shed water nicely in dry weather but they had to spread milk pans around the floor when it rained. Still, outside the kitchen there were already anemones and heart’s ease and even lovelier flowers, which her ignorance prevented her from naming. She joked that when it came to her new situation, it was only the resilience of her nature that allowed her to overcome such a dismal start.
She said that during what little time she had to herself Finney read to her from the New Testament, but that when it came to the Bible, he was familiar with many passages that had neither entered his understanding nor touched his heart.
She said she had enjoyed herself less these last few weeks than any other female who had ever lived. She said she could not account for her husband’s state of mind except her company being intensely disagreeable to him, and that if that were the case she was sorry for it.
She said that force alone would never have carried her to this spot but that she had been induced to act in support of the interest, happiness, and reputation of one she professed to love.
She said that as far as she might estimate we were now only eighty-five miles apart, but that she realized that poor people rarely visit.
She said she had always marveled that her name was so close to mine; didn’t I think it strange? Though as with most things, she said, it probably gave her a greater pleasure to tell me than it did me to hear.
She said it was so difficult to write of gratitude, but that she had to begin. She said my companionship had been a spacious community. She said she felt for me a tenderness closer than that of sisters, since her passion had all the honor of election. She said the memory she most cherished was of my turning to her that smile I wore when I saw that I was loved. She said she wished to see me more than she had any chance of making me understand. She said she was unsure what was to come, but that our occasions of joy and trust and care and courage would shine on us and protect us. She said that though the future seemed to admit no relief she would hold me by her fire until we found a season of hope and the beginnings of mercy. She said she had always believed in me. She offered again her heart’s thanks for all that I had given. She closed by pledging that any letter with which I responded would become her most closely guarded treasure, and would be preserved and returned to me in the event of her passing.
Cleaned out the shed, which was full of rusty and dusty rubbish. Washed windows and swept for the summer. Beneath it all, the irresistible current of the ongoing composition of my response. I will tell her that God caused this connection, and that what God has joined together let no man put asunder. I will tell her that I imagine the happiest of unions, of the sort in which two families previously at daggers-drawn are miraculously brought together on love’s account. I will tell her that our cardinals have come to love the acacia, on which I today counted twelve full branches in flower. I’ll describe for her our sudden wealth of fireflies, blown about in the evening breezes.
Fourteen dollars from the sale of our milk and butter.
Tuesday 5 June
A letter to Dyer from Finney informing him that Finney’s wife died on Thursday the 24th of May in the full enjoyment of her Christian faith. She was taken on a Wednesday and gone on Thursday. Her husband said he wished all to know that her last prayers were to God to he
lp her love His will even in her bitterness.
Thursday 7 June
Bleary and short of breath from the laudanum. I wake weeping, retire weeping, stand before my various duties weeping. Dyer takes the implements from my hands and finishes whatever tasks I’ve begun. I still move about the house as though performing in their appointed order my various offices.
He has conveyed my accusations to the sheriff, who was finally induced to visit. Despite some hours without the laudanum I was befogged and wild with anger and grief and the sheriff was left unsettled and wary at my state. Even so he claims to have satisfied himself in person after a two-day ride and interviews with both the bereaved husband and the sheriff of Oneida County that there has been an absence of foul play.
Monday 11 June
Took the wagon and rode to see Finney myself. Dyer refused to permit my departure and then refused to accompany me and then caught up to the cart just at the end of our property and climbed aboard. We were the very picture of anguish, rattling along side by side. A quiet but heavy rain persisted the entire second day.
The house even for that country had a wild and lonely situation. No one answered Dyer’s knock or call but the door was ajar and when he pushed it to, Finney was sunk in a chair in the middle of the room, facing us. He seemed unsurprised at our appearance and asked us our business.
At Dyer’s silence I gathered enough resolve to overcome my fear and said that we had come in order to learn what had happened to Tallie.
He said he thought that might have been our errand. He said he’d heard us arriving and had taken us for the tin knocker and had brought out all the pails and kettles that needed mending.
It was a hideously dark and dirty kitchen and it grieved me to think of Tallie among its spiders and yellow flies. I asked again for his account and he offered us nothing more than he had offered the sheriff. He remained in his chair and we remained in the doorway. He made no move to light a second lamp.
I said I had ridden three days for more particulars and that I would not leave without more particulars. He said he was not concerned with my desires. None of us said anything further and a mouse scuttled across the floor. He looked at Dyer with contempt. He related, finally, that Tallie had taken a chill and had continued ill for two days. He said he’d treated her with among other remedies a tea of soot and pine-tree roots, which had had some good effect, but that sickness always tests our willingness to bow before the greatest Authority.
He said nothing more after that. I was weeping such that I could barely see. I asked to view her grave and he said he had buried her up in the woods. I asked him to show me the location and he said that if he found us anywhere else on his land once we left his porch we would see what would happen. Dyer told him sharply that there was no cause for threats and that he should keep a civil tongue. He took my arm to lead me out and I pulled free and asked Finney how he lived with himself. He said he’d been sleeping well except for some rheumatism of the knees. He came onto the porch once we were seated on the wagon, and said that on the final day, Tallie had been able to sit up a little, with help, and that her expression at the very end had reminded him of the last afflictions of Mrs. Manning’s little girl, who had suffered so with her burns. And I could see on his face that he could see on mine the effect he had desired.
Sunday 24 June
A cut on my hand from a paring knife. Dyer at work in the barn. Night after night we enact our separation. Anxiety is now his family, and discord his home. Dark spirits his company. Captious dignity and moonlit tears his two prevailing states. This love he seeks to win back he fails to apprehend would be only the hulk of a wrecked affection, fitted with new sails.
There is no more uphill business than farming. The most fortunate of us persist without prospering.
Carried off in the night by the immensity of what we promise ourselves and fail.
At one point during Tallie’s last visit she expressed regret that I had never crossed the fields to visit her. I imagined telling her of my midnight expedition with the spyglass, but refrained. I joked instead about the need to preserve one’s self-respect, and the way I sometimes seemed to believe the only safety to be within. She’d had to look away, as though sharing my shame. Finally she’d said she always feared that she called misfortune down onto those she loved because of her intemperance, and that that thought on occasion had terrorized her. After another silence she asked if I didn’t think it eloquent that I had contributed nothing in response to her remark. I told her that I could not imagine what more we could do for each other, and she answered that the imagination could always be cultivated. And in the interval that followed, her fingers intertwined with mine but her silence was like the sight of a leafless tree in an arbor everywhere else blooming green.
Found Dyer in the late afternoon sitting beside Nellie’s gravestone. Sat with him in the dry grass. As though it were someone else’s I reread the poem I composed for her epitaph: One sweet flower has bloomed and faded / One dear infant voice has fled / One sweet bud the grave has shaded / One sweet girl O now is dead.
After dark across our upper fields I walked over the hills for the wide wide view. I stood there with my child’s face and my selfish love. I imagined my Tallie in that home that had lived mostly in our thoughts. I imagined myself not governed by the fear that holds the wretch in order. I imagined my response to her crying, “What do I know about you at this moment? Nothing!” I imagined cherishing a life touched with such alchemy. I imagined the story of a girl made human. I imagined Tallie’s grave, forsaken and remote. I imagined banishing forever those sentiments that she chastened and refined. I imagined everyone I knew sick to the point of death. I imagined a creature even more slow-hearted than myself. I imagined continuing to write in this ledger, here; as though that were life; as though life were not elsewhere.
ELIZABETH TALLENT
The Wilderness
FROM Threepenny Review
HER STUDENTS ARE the devotees and tenders of machines. Some of the machines are tiny and some of the machines are big. Nobody wrote down the law that students must have a machine with them at all times, yet this law is rarely broken, and when it is, the breaker suffers from deprivation and anxiety. Machines are sometimes lost, sometimes damaged, and this loss, this damage deranges existence until, mouseclick by mouseclick, chaos can be fended off with a new machine, existence regains confidence, harmony, interest, order, connectedness. Sleeping, certain machines display a dreamily pulsing heartbeat-like white light meaning this machine is not dead. Human voices, fragments of text: even in a silent room the machines are continually storing these up. The students never advance into a day or even an hour without the certainty of voices waiting for them, without the expectation of signals and signs. Rendered visible, the embrace of hyperconnectivity would float around their heads like gold-leaf halos. During class the machines grow restless and seek students’ attention. Certain machines purr, certain machines tremble; certain machines imitate birdsong. Whoever invented the software that causes the machine to sing like a bird must have foreseen not only bewilderment like the professor’s but also the pleasure her mistake, if visible (it is: flushed from her lecture notes, her gaze swerves around the room), gives to those in the know—that is, her students. For the fraction of an instant that either makes or breaks her authority (she would say she is not interested in authority)—the fraction when pure exhilarated hard-wired startlement tips into that very different laughter-inviting cognitive slough, bewilderment—the professor can’t make the correct attribution. The realistic sequence of ascending trills is, for her and her alone among the two hundred and forty-three listeners in the lecture hall, “bird.” To see the lift of her brows is to know that a bird flits through the wilderness of her brain, to understand that in the professor’s life there have been far more instances of birdsong from birds than from machines. To her students this is endearing: she can’t help letting it show that she belongs to the world that preceded theirs.
Her face gives her trouble as a teacher. Irony has inscribed certain lines—insincerity, others. The insincerity is estranging—estranging her from herself, that is, for she feels, inwardly, like the most honest person on the planet. Inwardly she is plain and kind—emotionally Amish. But outwardly, no. Outwardly she is a professor. With a mocking lift of her brows, she has more than once accidentally silenced a student and been stunned that it happened so fast. Now she strives, facially, for serenity. As a child in the depths of a great museum she was struck mute by the impersonally eloquent eyes painted onto the linen wrapped over the real face of the mummy—no detachment, no trace of aversion, rushed to defend her huge, vulnerable heart from the perfect painted face tenderly laid against the true hidden visage whose corruption seduced the imagination into graphic detail. That was going on right below an oval face whose uncanniness told her I was alive, whose individuality, almost completely submerged in stylization, was more poignant for having barely made it through. For the first time she understood death for what it was—once, a real person had spoken through those lips, a person had looked out from those eyes pointed at both ends. That was why they took children to museums—she had been meant to understand this great thing they all understood, whose inevitability they could somehow (she did not see how) bear, which they expected her to spend the rest of her life knowing: death, first recognized in the depths of the museum, would be alive for her now her whole life long, and could never be un-seen. Nothing had been offered in the way of preparation or protection, and this treachery of theirs, this cold willingness to let her see what she saw, could not be explained. Inconceivable, the demented precision of this blow aimed at her by forces pretending to be benign. Hours later, in the backseat of the station wagon trundling south on the highway leading away from the city, she had fallen asleep. When she woke, she was looking out of eyes pointed on each end.
The Best American Short Stories 2013 Page 34