Carry the World

by Susan Fanetti

  This little house was neatly kept. Humble and worn but cheerful, too. The paper on the walls was faded and stained in places, but not decaying. The furniture was sparse but comfortable and well-tended. There had been a rug on the floor of the front room; he could see the faint mark on the wood floor where that rug had lain a long time.

  Turning the other direction, toward the chatter of the other people here, Jonah saw the kitchen. And what an odd thing it was.

  A room all to itself, and small, but bright, more like the bathroom than the other rooms. White walls, white table, white chairs, white cupboards, but everything with a cheery red trim. A white sink, twice the size of the one in the bathroom, and another hot-cold tap.

  There were strange white contraptions as well, big enough to make the small space feel cramped. He’d seen something like them up at the Cummings’ place, back where Esther made her pies and pastries, but hers were black and wooden. An oven and an ice box. To keep food and cook it. ‘Modern conveniences,’ he’d heard them called.

  He really was from another world entirely, just a few hours away. He was like one of those space monsters Elijah had told him about, from the stories he read.

  Elijah, Bluebird, and Ada’s mother were sitting at the table. Ada stood beside the ice box, making something at the worktop. Bluebird was chattering about something, and Bess, Ada’s mother, was smiling and nodding.

  Chancey stood near the door, his flat cap in his hand. Jonah hoped that meant the boy was on his way out.

  “Pa!” Bluebird stopped her cheerful prattle—Jonah hadn’t yet devoted enough attention to her words to know their topic—“Are you better?”

  Ada spun around. “Jonah! You shouldn’t be up!”

  He felt a little wobbly and suddenly too exhausted to stand, it was true. Getting his overalls on had been harder than he’d expected. His left knee buckled as if to agree with Ada, and he stumbled into the ice box.

  Chancey stood right where he was, holding his hat, but Jonah wouldn’t have wanted his help, anyway. Ada was there, and Elijah, too, and they got him to the empty chair at the table. Getting to that seat burned like a house afire, but he managed it and gave out a relieved breath when he was down. Seated at the table with his children. With his family. It was what he wanted.

  “You’re supposed to stay in bed for a few days, Jonah. A few days. Until your blood replenishes.”

  He looked up at her and said the only thing his mind offered to his mouth: “Lonely.”

  That made her smile, and she leaned down and kissed his cheek. “Alright. The children and I were going to bring you supper later, but if you promise to let me know when you need to lie down again, you can stay while we make it.”

  “Maybe I should stay, too, Mizz Ada,” Chancey said. “’Case you need me.”

  Jonah enjoyed the sharp look Ada sent to that boy. “Thank you, Chancey, but we’re fine. Go on home to your momma.”

  The boy hesitated a bit longer before he nodded. “I’ll be by tomorrow, then. Help you with the field.”

  Ada answered only with a short bob of her head.

  “Thank you, Chancey,” Bess said. “Don’t know what we’d do without you.”

  “I’m here for you, Mizz Bess. Don’t worry none ‘bout that.” And with that, the boy finally left.

  Jonah watched until the boy was in his noisy, smelly truck and backing out.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Ada asked. “Water, or tea? Milk?”

  “Water’s fine.” He smiled at Bluebird. “What you chatterin’ ‘bout, baby girl?”

  “I was tellin’ Grammy Bess ‘bout Lulubelle ‘n how she likes to sleep under my legs.”

  Jonah sucked in a breath to hear his girl call Ada’s mother by that name. The stretch of muscles in the gasp added fuel to the fire in his belly, and he grunted, earning a keen, examining look from Ada. He put a smile on his face, but she didn’t seem especially reassured.

  Lulubelle was one of the new goats born this spring. She was a tiny thing, and thick as a post, but she’d picked Bluebird as her special favorite person, and would likely be more pet than farm animal. Small as she was, Jonah didn’t see her breeding. But she made his girl happy, so she had her purpose, too.

  “The children was tellin’ all about your place, Jonah,” Bess said. “I know your people, or did. I was raised up in Red Fern Holler.”

  “Yes’m, that’s what Ada said. I remember your mother, Mizz Dee, a little. She was a real good lady. Sorry I can’t say I remember you.”

  The old woman smiled and waved a hand to dismiss his apology. He noted that she kept her hands resting lightly on the table, ready for use as surrogates for her eyes. “I come down the mountain long ‘fore you was born, I reckon, and only went up for visits after. No reason you’d ‘member me, livin’ up in Cable’s Holler like you do.” She heaved a soft sigh, and her smile faded out. “’Tis a good life, up in the mountain. Ain’t easy, but it ain’t easy nowhere. Up there, people is who they say they is. Things is like they should be.”

  Ada set a glass of water—it had little cubes of ice in it—on the table before him and gave his shoulder a squeeze before she went back to her work.

  Jonah couldn’t disagree. Down here, he understood hardly anything. Down here, he’d been threatened and insulted and finally shot. He didn’t belong down here. In Cable’s Holler, he’d been mainly unhappy and barely living until recently, and he didn’t have much, lived on the edge of failing every day of his life, but he had his children, and his ways of being that made sense.

  “Yes’m,” he finally said.

  Bess’s sightless eyes narrowed, and she seemed to stare right at him. “You get them hobo men up in the hollers, Jonah Walker?”

  He turned to Ada, who was frowning at her mother, and chewing on her bottom lip.

  “No’m. Ain’t no place to get to from up there.”

  Her right hand covered her left, and she traced a finger over the narrow gold band on her third finger. “I reckon not. If you go up there, you’re goin’ home. Things is like they should be.”

  Jonah didn’t answer. A thought had sprouted in his mind, and drew his attention.

  Ada turned the talk from the shadows it had wandered into. She spread out a piece of newspaper in the middle of the table and set a strainer full of green beans on it. “Children, Momma, will you split the beans for me?” She lifted her mother’s hand and set it on the strainer.

  While Bess and the children got to work, Jonah sipped his water and let his thought take root.

  They buried Ada’s father five days after Jonah had arrived in his noteworthy way. By then, he was healed enough to stand with her through the service at the church, and the few words the preacher said at the graveside in the churchyard. He wore borrowed clothes that didn’t fit right and borrowed shoes that pinched, but he was, he thought, presentable enough.

  Ada remade a pair of trousers and a plain white shirt from her father for Elijah to wear, and she made Bluebird a whole new dress. His baby girl dizzied herself spinning around and around in that new frock. Most all she’d ever worn before had been Grace’s house dresses, cut down and re-hemmed as well as Jonah could. But his stitching skill was in mending, not making. Ada had a talent.

  Elijah and Bluebird had never been to a funeral before, but since they didn’t know Zeke McDaniel, he didn’t think they were stressed by it. If they had questions, they hadn’t yet asked. Zeke’s coffin was closed, with a spray of lilies lying on its plain pine lid.

  Jonah hadn’t been to a funeral since his family had died, when Grace had been there to see to things. He’d buried Grace alone, near her favorite place in the world, in a humble grave marked with a cross he’d made. Her name wasn’t on it because, though he recognized the shape of it, he hadn’t been able to make the letters right, and he hadn’t wanted to ugly up her marker with his unschooled attempt at writing.

  He kept by Ada’s side, and she stayed by her mother’s. The children sat with them in the church and stoo
d with them in the graveyard, quiet and curious, but not overly upset. They understood enough to know why Ada and Bess were crying, and to feel the weight of those tears, but not to be overswept by grief of their own. They were simply subdued and respectful, and Jonah was as proud of them as he’d ever been.

  There was a gathering after in the church, a potluck not unlike those sometimes held in Red Fern Holler. There was music, a fiddle and a bagpipe, and even a little bit of dancing. It turned out that the people of Barker’s Creek were mostly of Scottish blood and not so far removed from the memory of that homeland. They sent their dead off with good cheer.

  Jonah thought there was Scot in his blood, too. Or Irish, maybe. Maybe a little of both. But he didn’t know for sure, and didn’t figure it mattered. The only heritage he cared for loomed above his head. He was of the mountain.

  At the wake, Jonah’s wound and weariness began to get the better of him. The children were playing with the other children. Bess was seated at the widow’s place, with Ada at her side, and they were accepting condolences from their friends and neighbors. He didn’t belong amongst them; he was a stranger to them all.

  This world was so much bigger than his own. He’d thought Red Fern Holler to be a thriving village, but there were more people at this wake than that whole holler held. At least two dozen cars and trucks were parked outside the church. All these people lived in a world of motors and electricity, of flush toilets and ice-cold milk in August.

  And they all looked at him and whispered. In his ill-fitting borrowed clothes, Jonah tried not to notice the gossip he stirred up, but it was hard to miss. Just standing in amongst them like some folklore forest creature was near as tiring as the bullet wound.

  Finally, he found an empty chair at the edge of the room, near the door, and took the respite it offered. When he was seated, he realized there were people talking in the little nook where the door was. Men, three of them, at least. One of them was Chancey.

  Jonah wasn’t around people enough to have strong feelings about many of them. He loved his children. And Ada. He’d loved Grace, and still loved the memory of her. He’d loved his parents and sister. Ada said he had friends, but if that were true, then he was a bad friend, because he thought of no one in that way. Except for the people he loved, he’d never cared strongly for anyone in one way or the other, good or ill.

  But he was starting to feel hate for that boy. No good reason, really. Nothing the boy had done had been aggressive or even hostile to him. Not outright, at least. Even shooting him had been about protecting Ada, not attacking him.

  But that was where Jonah’s animosity lay: in Chancey’s presence around Ada. All the time. Hovering. Putting himself in the way to take care of her.

  Watching her.

  Chancey had his sights set on Ada, and Jonah hated that. The boy was half his age, and Ada plainly did not share Chancey’s feeling, but Jonah still wanted him away from her. The thought of going back to Cable’s Holler and leaving Chancey alone down here to insinuate himself into Ada’s life made a wholly different kind of fire in Jonah’s belly.

  The thought of going back to Cable’s Holler without Ada was bad enough.

  Just around the corner from where he sat, Chancey was talking with two other men Jonah didn’t know. He listened.

  “They found the man in Letcher County. Pack half-full of coins and jewelry, little figures from some ladies’ shelves. Nothin’ he had leads back to Zeke’s place, but he come through these parts, so likely he already sold off anythin’ he took down here.”

  Jonah didn’t know who that was speaking.

  Chancey spoke next. “You think he the one killed Zeke?”

  “Likely so,” the first man answered. “Though we ain’t had no more reports of hobos killin’ nobody ‘round these parts. ‘Twas prob’ly a mistake, though that don’t put breath back in Zeke’s chest. From what I took the scene to be, Zeke caught him goin’ through the house, faced off with him. Hobo picked up that radio they had—maybe he’s even tryin’ to steal that, but it was heavy, one of them tabletop models, you know—he picked up that radio and hit Zeke with it. Prob’ly jus’ wanted to knock him down and get runnin’, but he stove in the old man’s head.”

  “What he get away with?” a third man asked.

  “Not much. Ada’s weddin’ ring, and Zeke’s. A couple cheap trinkets of Ada’s. A silver frame with Zeke and Bess’s weddin’ picture in it. A brass candlestick he mighta thought was gold.” The man who was obviously a lawman, and a bit older, chortled darkly. “Fool’s gold.”

  Chancey grumbled, “Killed Zeke over nothin’.”

  “Yeah, and he’d’a swung for it, but his cellmate got him first. Kicked him so hard, put a rib clear through his heart.”

  The third man asked, “He dead?”

  “As a doornail.”

  “Well, that’s somethin’, then.”

  “Don’t help Mizz Bess or Mizz Ada, though, do it?” Chancey countered.

  The third man, who sounded Chancey’s age, chortled. “I figured you had that in hand, Chance. Or can’t you get it done with that stranger lurkin’ around? What’s that, anyway? Who’s he, stayin’ in that house with the ladies?” He laughed again. “Maybe Mizz Ada ain’t so sweet aft’all. She got a taste of it back when she was married, so I bet she needs it bad now. Bet a real hot fire burns under all that red hair.”

  The men laughed.

  Jonah was on his feet again so fast he didn’t have time to protect his sore belly or bother with the cramp that went through him. He swung around the corner and stood tall, energized by a fiery blaze of anger.

  All three men—one his age, in a suit with a string tie, and the other two just barely men, in their Sunday trousers and shirts—gaped at him.

  “Get her name out your mouths,” Jonah said.

  The lawman in the string tie had the decency to look abashed before he took on an aspect of authority, and the other younger man, the one who’d been so nasty, flinched back, but Chancey came to him, his face shaping into a mask of territorial aggression.

  He stood toe to toe, two or three inches shorter than Jonah, and said, “I knowed Ada all my life. I been takin’ care of her since she come back home. I’ll talk ‘bout her if I want. Who’re you to crawl down here like some varmint from under a rock and spout off?”

  Jonah felt himself grow bigger as Chancey challenged him. Never before had he felt this way, this violent need to do harm. He was a quiet man. He wasn’t like this. He didn’t need to be like this. Ada loved him. She abided Chancey, and just barely that. It was him, Jonah, she loved. He knew it as sure as he knew his love for her.

  But Chancey lived here, where she lived. Not hours of hard riding away, as Jonah did.

  And he didn’t know if he could change that.

  At the moment he decided to back down, that his fight wasn’t here and this boy wasn’t worth it, that he needed to talk to Ada, Chancey decided to make it a fight. He lashed out.

  And punched Jonah in the belly.

  The blow took the wind out of him and doubled him over as hot agony seared through him, flowing outward like the rays of the sun.

  What it didn’t do is take him off his feet.

  What it didn’t do is calm his irrational anger.

  Instead, the blazing pain met with the fire of his anger and became an inferno. He stood tall again, forgetting entirely his pain. He was blocking the way from this nook to the main room, and the lawman was in the way of the door itself. Chancey was trapped.

  Jonah grabbed the boy by the collar of his Sunday shirt and shot his fist into his face.

  Chapter Twenty

  Doc Dollens stood up straight and pushed his spectacles up on his nose. “Well, you’re damn—” he cut himself short with a glance around the church sanctuary and then corrected himself—“real lucky, Jonah. There’s no pull to the stitches, and I don’t even see much bruising. I’d say Chancey got the worst by a fair amount. And Zeke, havin’ his wake tore up like that.” H
e shook his head sadly. “Poor Bess. You can close up your shirt.”

  Jonah stood up from the wooden pew and began to fasten the buttons on this borrowed shirt. The sleeve was torn, pulled away at the shoulder, and two buttons had been popped near the collar. It wasn’t even his shirt.

  He turned and sought Ada’s eyes. “I’m real sorry.”

  She stood just behind his pew, out of the way of the doctor’s work, but close enough for support. Her hands gripped the curved edge of the pew so hard her knuckles had gone blue. “It’s not your fault. Sheriff Guthrie said Chancey threw the first punch. In your stomach. Of course you had to defend yourself.”

  He was defending her most of all, but he didn’t know how to say that, or if he should.

  If it had been only that brief exchange, just a punch apiece, maybe he wouldn’t have felt so guilty. But after Chancey had rebounded from the blow to his face and realized his nose was bleeding and broken, something had snapped in the boy, and he’d flown at Jonah, sending him out of that little nook by the door, into the main room. Jonah hadn’t been in a fight since he was a boy. But he was bigger than Chancey, and apparently stronger as well. He’d acted out of pure instinct, trying to stop the boy from making a ruckus at Ada’s father’s wake, and just trying not to get hit.

  They’d knocked over the table full of food and sent a gaggle of ladies rushing out of the way to safety. Jonah had avoided most of the boy’s wild blows before he’d managed to get over on him and slam his head on the ground until he went limp.

  He was fine, or would be. Had a knob on the back of his head and the pain to go with it. Pretty light cost for attacking a man he’d shot the week before.