by L. S. Young
By morning, the barn was a heap of ash, and rain had come to dampen the last of the embers.
Will and I were both covered with soot and had suffered burns on our hands and arms. He had a blister on his cheek, and his eyebrows were singed. We both took a bath and dressed. Emptying the black wash water out the back door, I was reminded of Granny’s story about how she had washed the soot from the mining town off her face and hands forever. “I’d just as soon wash the dust of farming off my hands for good,” I muttered.
I laved our burns in cool well water and dressed them with aloe and butter. Then I brewed strong coffee and sliced bread to go with jam for our breakfast. Will was despondent. I faced him across the kitchen table.
“Ida says they need a new foreman at the cotton gin. I think you ought to apply.”
He shook his head. “I can’t boss the Negroes. I know nothing of them.”
“But you could learn. They’re just people, after all. It would be like the time you worked as foreman in your early twenties.”
“Landra, I can do this, I know I can.
I sighed deeply, my face hardening with anger. “The cotton burned last night! All of it! Are you going to sit there and pretend it didn’t happen?”
“And now you’re displeased,” said Will.
“Yes.”
He took me by the shoulders.
“I can do this, Landra. Farming takes time is all, work and perseverance.”
“You think I don’t know that? I believe you can farm Will, but fate has dealt us a shoddy hand this year. Perhaps you should consider turning your hand to something more secure.”
“Please, my darling, give me one more chance.”
I turned from him to look out the window, sighed again, and left our argument at a stalemate.
When a few months passed and he made no effort to look for work in town, I was dismayed. Things had come to a pretty pass with our finances, or what I knew of them. We had our kitchen garden and what preserves I could put by, but unlike the Pines, our livestock were restricted to the heifer and a few chickens. We did not often get meat. I lost weight from continuing to nurse the baby and took to wearing some of Ida’s old hand-me-downs, as my old dresses hung on my thin frame. Thus, my once abiding affection for my husband turned slowly toward discontent. My unhappiness had rankled bitterly within my heart, and I came at last to love and hate him by turns.
“What’s for supper?” asked Will one evening.
“Gopher stew.”
He wrinkled his brow. “Truly? I’ve never had it.”
“I came upon one on my walk with the children yesterday. They’re better than no meat at all.”
“What about the salt pork from the mercantile?”
“We ate nearly all with the potatoes yesterday. I used the rest to season the stew.”
He came behind me and rubbed my shoulders as I stirred the pot over the stove, but I shrugged him off. “You know I hate when you pester me as I’m working round the fire,” I snapped.
“Begging your pardon!” returned Will, sounding hurt. He lifted the baby and began to throw him into the air until he shrieked with laughter. “What’d you learn today?” he asked Ezra, who was setting the table. Ezra shrugged. “Sums n’ ‘rithmetic, and some of a primer.”
“He’s an enthusiastic scholar, as you see,” I said.
“He’ll get there.”
We sat down to the stew with a pan of cornbread. I had seasoned and browned the gopher in a pot with salt pork then cooked it with tomatoes, onion, potatoes, and broth.
“This is quite good,” said Will in surprise. “Gamey, but not so different as beef.”
I nodded. “I hope you plan to take up fishing and hunting for deer and quail over the winter. That or develop a taste for tough squirrel and swamp cabbage. Without our cotton . . .”
“We’ll make do. I’ve money put back.”
“Mr. Hamilton at the mercantile said we’ve bought a lot of goods on credit, including seed.”
Will crumbled cornbread into his stew and stirred it. “We’ll pay it.”
“I think you ought to consider other employment. Everyone in town likes you. You’re friendly and educated. I’ll bet you could make a decent clerk at the bank. Or . . . you could write to Gabriel. Ask him again about the job at the firm?”
William’s brother owned an insurance business and had once, in a burst of friendliness, offered him a position, but he had declined.
“I’ve told you he and I don’t get on.” He frowned for a moment at what I imagined was a remembered slight, but I was unmoved.
I slammed my spoon down on the table, making Ezra jump. I immediately regretted the action, as it seemed like something my father might have done, but I was angry.
“I won’t put up with it any longer,” I said. “I’ll go to work if you don’t.”
Will regarded me doubtfully. “Who’ll look after the children and help me with the planting?”
“I don’t know! Maybe I’ll leave and take them, and you can see to it all on your own!”
“I tell you, there is nothing here for a gentleman to attempt.”
“You mean there is nothing you will attempt.”
“Not when I should be certain of failure. None of my efforts please you, Landra.”
“Efforts?” I scoffed. “They’d please me if they resulted in a warm house and a full table, with a bit extra for something fine now and again. But you’re content to do without, to forego sugar and see me dressed in rags.”
“I hardly call Ida Monday’s castoffs rags.”
“The fact I’m thin enough to wear her things ought to tell you how little you provide for us to eat. It takes everything I have to nurse this child. I shall have to wean him before age two! My milk is drying up.”
A spasm went through him, and he threw his head in his hands, moaning. He murmured that I was cold-hearted and cruel, but I stood resolute as he wept, until he sought refuge out of doors.
That night, I put Ezra and Card to bed in the room they shared and went to sleep in the spare room bed. It smelt of must and the damp, and I could feel the small, hard pieces of mouse droppings beneath the linen sheets, but I was too beside myself even to sweep them away. Will begged me to speak to him and come to our bed, but I turned my back to him. The following morning, I rose as usual to make breakfast. When he came down to the fireside dressed, I brought him his coffee. He looked up from his whittling with a wary smile that lit his pleasant features, and my civility to him returned, but my amity did not.
I went to seek Granny’s advice. The farther I walked, the more upset I became. I ran the last quarter mile to her cabin with Card clutched tightly in my arms and arrived at her door weeping and out of breath, with my hair tumbled and my hem torn. She was seated in her rocker on the porch, as ever, and I knelt and put Card in her lap.
“Yore a plum mess, chile,” she said, dandling him on her knees. “Whatcha doin’ away from home at midday?”
“Granny,” I sobbed, “help me. Tell me what to do. I’m heartbroken!”
“Pshaw.” She spat a stream of brown tobacco juice over the porch. “Broken? Naw, chile. You settle down. All you need is a cry. You’ve got my iron will.”
I shook my head. “I haven’t . . . or I’d do something.”
“Ya do. I seen it for m’self the day Elizabeth died. I left my Ma and Pa at age fifteen, never to see ‘em agin. I seen a husband an four sons die. My heart still ain’t broke. Calloused over mebbe. An yore the same way. That man been treatin’ you ill?”
I sniffed. “No, but I fear he’s a fool, and his hands turn to idleness. And he’s given me a son.”
“A fool, eh? Perhaps he is that. After all, he’s wedded to a trollop, who couldn’t keep her legs closed for the marriage
bed and got a bastard to prove it.”
I recoiled from her. “How could you say such—”
“The truth? Wouldn’t know it if it spat in your face wouldja?”
I stood up and leaned against a post, wiping my eyes with my hem.
“What am I to do?” I asked again, flatly this time, without pleading.
“G’wan home. Hoe the garden and cook supper. Do the washin’.” She bounced Card on her lap and pretended to nip at his hands when he touched her mouth. “Look after yer young’uns. You’ve a right fine way with chillun. And last, you remember well whut you’ve learnt—whut you can and cain’t git outta him. Have ya learnt?”
I nodded. My lips trembled as I thought of what I’d never get out of Will, and what I would: some work, a bit of whittling, a bit of banjo picking, and a heap of affection.
“Well, then, learn to get the goddamn upper hand once in a while.”
“But he’s a man, and my husband! He’s supposed to rule, and work, and provide. But he’s got no wisdom, nor sense.” This was not entirely true, but my emotions had overridden any memories I held of Will’s practicality or his stalwart presence in a crisis.
Granny’s lip curled. “Ain’t met a man yet got sense. What’s between their legs takes all the sense right out of ‘em.”
I stared at my shoes, downcast.
“There’s more to be said for a lovin’ man,” Granny continued thoughtfully, “than most young gals think. A warm bed and a kind word is more than most folks get.”
“More perhaps, but not enough. Not for me.”
She glanced at me shrewdly and chewed her lip but made no reply. This was a puzzle I must solve alone. Joy and discontent would rise and fall within me, bickering like enemy sisters, flipping back and forth like two sides of the same coin. My desire and my ambition would war with my heart until I was as hard as iron. Granny was right when she spoke of callouses instead of cracks. I thought of my words to Daddy the night he had whipped me. “You cannot break me.” My heart could not be broken, but it could become as tough as dried leather.
In May, Henry wrote to tell me that Della would be absent the whole month of June, attending festivities for her sister’s wedding to a stockbroker in New York. He had enclosed a train ticket to Tallahassee and the address of a hotel there. You are Mrs. Jones, the note said in his spidery hand. It was not the first time he had sent me such instructions. I knew he had sat alone waiting for me several nights, wondering if I would appear. Up to that point, I had never once considered leaving my children for such a deed, not in earnest. This time, the idea set my heart beating with an unprecedented emotion; it was ambition, but with a darkness around its edges.
I spent the remainder of that month weaning Cardinal. My milk was nearly gone already, but it was sorrowful nonetheless, refusing him the breast when he cried for it and giving him cow’s milk instead. I told myself it would benefit him in the end. I thought of Mama’s diary and how she had called the Mondays trash, yet she had sent me there for an education and so had Colleen, knowing I would benefit one day from their connections. To override one’s principles was not as unheard of as people pretended, I told myself. People did it every day.
I left the children with Lily, under pretense of visiting Aunt Maude in Monticello. I could tell she was suspicious of such a visit in the middle of the year, but she did not question me. Seeing her and Laramie together for the first time since their wedding, I saw, as I had suspected, that their marriage had been almost purely for carnal reasons; they could barely keep their hands from one another. If only a girl could marry once for lust and once for love, I thought, and keep them both. I wondered if it were a profane thought, or perhaps, if all thoughts were free from censure.
I was jealous of Lily’s abandon to those early months of bliss and pleasure. With a pang, I remembered my own days as a new bride, being made love to in the library, the smell of lignin and old books, and Will’s hands, strong but gentle in my long hair.
I wore my best gray silk dress to the hotel in Tallahassee. It had a fine patterned carpet and an ornate ceiling. A gold and crystal chandelier hung in the foyer, which was full of ferns and fresh flowers. When I registered as Mrs. Jones and said I was meeting my husband, the clerk did not bat an eye. He gave me my room key, and a bellhop carried my carpetbag up the sweeping staircase.
The room was fine without being lavish. Henry had not yet arrived. I removed my gloves and smoothed my hair in the looking glass that hung above the washbasin. It had been so long since I gave any thought to my appearance; a crease was forming between my eyes from worry, and I smoothed it with my fingers. I had rouged my lips and powdered my face on the train, but it did not hide the freckles that had blossomed on my nose and cheeks from working in the garden. Della Van Heusen-Miller did not have freckles, I knew.
The sound of the lock turning in the door made me whirl around. Henry entered the room with uncharacteristic shyness, but his dark eyes were full of pleasure as they met mine. He slid the bolt in place and crossed the room.
“Lander Anders,” he said, embracing me, “I thought you’d never come. Thought, in fact, I’d have to drag you here kickin’ and screamin’.”
“You’d have been in for a fight if you’d tried it,” I said, raising one brow.
Henry shook his head. “Don’t I know it?”
“I’m glad you got here so soon,” I said, “for I hadn’t time to get nervous.”
He smiled, but there was a hunger in his eyes that hadn’t been there when he entered the room. My heart began hammering in my chest. I had worried a hundred times on the train about how it would go, but I needn’t have done so. Henry never created any need for pretense. He kissed me with determination, taking my lips in his own, tasting me with his tongue. His hand cupped one of my breasts and caressed it. He lifted my skirts with the other, letting his fingers wander to unhook my garters and slide up my inner thigh.
“Oh!” I gasped when he touched me, kneading me between my thighs until I was wet with desire.
“Take this off,” he breathed, tugging at the buttons of my dress. With his help, it was off and he was carrying me to the bed. He ran his hands all over me, kissed my neck and tasted my breasts. Then he lifted me, his hands on my bottom, and penetrated me. I cried out with the promptness of it. All of my nerves were pent up with anticipation, and it built as he made love to me, expertly, rhythmically, until a keen pleasure burst before my closed eyes in a myriad of colors. He finished a few moments later and lay beside me. I was trembling and breathless. He propped himself on his elbow to look at me.
“Was all of that too much?” he asked.
I gave him a small smile. “It was not unexpected.”
“I reckon your husband don’t make you feel that way?”
I closed my eyes. William was a skilled and gentle lover; his Parisian and New Orleans whores had taught him well in his youth.
“You promised we wouldn’t speak of him, or of Della.”
“I’m sorry.” He traced the rose-hued circle of my areola with his finger. “Your tits are bigger than I recall.”
“Is this meant to be a compliment?”
“I say so!”
“You know, Fitzwilliam Darcy would never have used the word tits. You might have phrased it, ‘your bosom is opulent even above my recollection.’”
“If I knew what any of them words meant I mighta used ‘em.”
I sighed, smiling. “I’ve had two babies since you were with me last. I’m worn out now.”
“You’re gorgeous is what you are. Perfect.”
“Perfect!” I laughed. “You don’t have to flatter me to get what you want, Henry. After all, I’m here.”
He ran his hand over my belly. “Yes. I think of you all the time, Landra. I have for always.”
I did not believe this
, but I allowed it. I took in his features, sating years of longing; he was just as I had known him, the dark, piercing eyes with the brows arched fiercely above them, the chiseled jaw, the thin-lipped mouth, and coppery brown curls.
“Whatcha see?” he asked.
“Just you. You always were the finest-looking hayseed in the county. I might say in return, you were not such a skilled lover at our last coupling.”
The corner of his mouth lifted into the rakish smile that had undone me so often in my youth, revealing his small, fine teeth, slightly out of line. I slid off the bed and wrapped myself in the robe hanging in the closet then admired his form as he lay prone on top of the coverlet. While Will’s strength was one of broad shoulders and strong arms, Henry’s was more subtle, cunning. I took in his slender wiriness, his ample manhood.
He caught me looking at him and moved into a posture that displayed his charms more openly, his eyes laughing. “Did you forget I was hung like a stallion?”
I tisked at this vulgarity, but his easy confidence aroused me. I lay down again and ran my fingernails over his taut bicep, raising goosebumps on his skin. It was not long before we made love again. This time, as he moved inside me, he said, “Say you love me.” I closed my eyes, but he repeated the words until I said them.
“I love you, I love you.”
The following day was Saturday. We ordered room service and bathed together. After a bout of lovemaking, I lay in his arms as he ran his fingers through my hair and over my features.
“Henry, we should talk of this. Before tomorrow.”
He shook his head and did not speak.
“We must.”
“Naw. We’ll talk next time, and the next. Then we’ll get a house only for talkin, and another house, only for lovemakin’.”