Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  Now she was his responsibility, she, and the baby she carried—he was a husband now, and in a number of months would be a father. For the first time he understood how his own father must have felt, in struggling so long, and in finally dying, to try to give his son something that would have been his own. Now that son would have a son or daughter of his own—what could he give his child? And, what could he give Elise? In bringing her here, he had not allowed himself to think beyond the very fact of their being together, trusting that he would find a way for them to build a life—but he had to think beyond that fact now. He had to put a roof of their own over their heads, had to put his own food on their table, had to be the husband and father and man that his parents had raised him to be.

  Elise moved slightly in her sleep, curling closer to him as she lay on her side, her soft hair brushing his neck as she settled again, sighing softly in her sleep before becoming quiet. He pulled the patchwork quilts closer about her, for the room was cold still in spite of the fire he had gotten up to put wood on twice already in the night. He moved to press a cheek to her hair, closing his eyes, and losing himself for a moment in the warm feel of her against him—but the thoughts would not go away. He owed her so much more than he was giving her now, so much, in light of all she had given up to become his wife. Elise Whitley’s children were meant to be born to wealth and luxury, to a fine home, to a world of electricity and running water, of motor cars and radio and more money than you could ever need—not the things he could give them.

  But she had chosen him, and now he had a choice to make, a choice he had never thought to be brought to, but a choice he could no longer see a way around.

  He woke her gently in the hour before dawn, and loved her with his body for a time before they rose from the bed to go into this world he had brought her to. He could not help but to watch her as she helped his Gran’ma prepare breakfast that morning, realizing that she had probably never before cooked anything in her life—there were a great many firsts ahead for both of them, he realized.

  He was not surprised when, as that day wore on, he found his steps leading him toward a path through the winter-quiet woods, and toward the land that he had been born to, toward the home he had known for the first nineteen years of his life, and the dream that both his parents had given their lives to have. The sky to the west was low and gray as he broke free of the woods at the edge of the winter-dead cotton fields, the air heavy with moisture. It would rain before this day was over, a hard, cold rain that would sit on the red land for days before seeping in.

  His steps finally stopped as he reached a rise, where he could see the small, white house where it sat beyond the apple orchard and the clay road. He stood beneath the barren branches of the old oak tree that he had played in as a child, staring at the house where his mother had given him life, and where his father had given him a dream. He was unmindful of the threatening sky or the cold wind that whipped about him as his eyes moved over the yard and toward the Model T car that now sat pulled up before the front steps, his eyes coming to rest on the wide porch and the door to what had been his home. For a moment, he could almost hear the sound of an old, foot-treadle sewing machine, the sound of a woman’s voice singing, the creak of a rocking chair, and feel the warmth of a fireplace and a time he knew would never be again. For a moment he could almost feel the presence of the tall, strong man, and the small, dark woman who had once been his world, and the little boy who had lived in their hearts and had somehow carried on their dreams. He stared toward the house, remembering all his father had told him about the struggle and saving, of all the hard work and worry, to have this land and to hold onto it—land that Janson had lost to the auction block.

  He stared toward the fields, now barren, the dry cotton plants waiting to be turned under for the new year’s cotton crop—fields that had once been burned black in a gasoline-ignited fire that had ended a part of Janson’s life forever. He stared toward the edge of the field to the place where his father had died in his mother’s arms in the midst of that hellish night, and he could almost smell the smoke, could almost feel the heat, could almost still choke on the smell of the burning lint and the taste of his own hatred as he remembered.

  He stared toward the front of the house to the place where Walter Eason had stood little more than a year later, after those months of Janson struggling to try to hold onto the land, after Janson having seen his mother die the winter after his father, after the notice of foreclosure had finally been received—Walter Eason had offered him a job in the cotton mill in town, had told him there would always be a place for him there, for a “good, hardworking boy” like him.

  Janson could remember that day so well, could feel the lowered, darkened sky, so like this day, and the hatred as he had stared at the man he knew was responsible for both his parents’ deaths, and for his loss of the land. Henry Sanders had refused to sell his cotton crop in the county at the Easons’ prices, for he had known that to do so would have meant the loss of the land—but they had lost the land anyway, and Janson had lost both his parents as well. He had thrown Walter Eason off the land that day, and had left Eason County shortly thereafter, knowing he could never work for the Easons, for Henry Sanders had worked and slaved and sworn never to see his son within the walls of that cotton mill, never to see him owned and sweated into old age for someone like the Easons.

  Henry Sanders had worked in that cotton mill; he and his wife had saved and dreamed and done without until they could guarantee their son a better life. Janson had grown up with the red land beneath his feet, the first in his family ever born to his own land in a line of Irish tenant farmers, Southern sharecroppers, and dispossessed Cherokee. Janson had never once worked indoors, had never thought to work where he could not see the sun or sky, for he was a farmer, and that was all he had ever wanted to be.

  But now there was something he wanted more. Now there was something that meant more to him than the red earth, more even than the dream of owning something that was his own—Elise. Elise and their baby. Now he had a reason to want the land more than for himself alone. Now he had a reason to want it more than as a home he could give Elise—it would one day belong to his son, to grandsons he would someday know. Now there was a reason to accept a roof and walls to work within, as his own father had done. He could not take Elise to a sharecropped farm, for that would be a life far worse than any in town, losing half a crop each year for use of mules and plow and earth, watching their own half eaten up by a store charge they would be forced to run, taking her to live in a drafty shack, for most sharecropped farms were far worse than the one his grandparents cropped on halves—no, that was no life for Elise, or for their children. The choice was made, a choice he would have to live with, a choice he had no alternative to.

  He knelt and picked up a winter-brown leaf that had fallen from the branches of the oak tree, then straightened to stare toward the house again—this would be theirs again, one day, no matter how long it took him; one day he would give this to Elise, and to their sons and daughters. Until then he would work, he would slave, he would be sweated into old age if he had to—but this would be theirs.

  He crushed the leaf in his hand as he took one last look at the land he had dreamed of through the last year, the way of life he had always known—at the red earth, the tall pines, the all-seeing sky. It was a way of life he would not know again for a very long time, locked within the walls and ceiling of a cotton mill, owned and worked by men he would forever hate. He looked, and he remembered. Then he turned his back and walked away.

  Chapter Two

  “It’ll kill him,” Deborah Sanders said as she pounded the wash that lay on the battling block, using the heavy stick she held in both hands. “He ain’t a man for workin’ indoors—it’ll kill him, sure as I’m standin’ here.” She pounded the wash even harder, staring across the narrow distance of ground beside her sharecropped home at the girl who was now wife to her grandson. Eli
se stood nearby, up to her elbows in steaming water, scrubbing clothes up-and-down over the rub board in front of her. The girl did not say a word as she stood in the cold air, a slight mist of steam rising from the washtub before her, and that made Deborah only angrier, even as she prayed again, for the innumerable time, for the patience to deal with the girl.

  Janson had been back in Eason County for a little over a month now, having brought this one back with him after almost a year’s absence from his family and home—Lord, but Deborah had been surprised to see the sort of girl Janson had taken to wife, with her bobbed-off hair and her short skirts, and—heaven help them both—she had already been with child when Janson married her. Deborah still did not know what to make of this Elise Whitley, except that she was a spoiled child who had never done a day’s work in all her life. Deborah had no idea what sort of marriage this was going to be, since the girl had never cooked or cleaned or sewed or made a bed even once in her life for all anyone could tell of her. She had burned so many pans of biscuits and cornbread over the past month that Deborah had worried she would set the house ablaze over their heads if not kept away from the stove—Elise was never going to be able to keep house on her own, Deborah was certain of that, if Janson kept to this fool’s plan he had announced to them only this morning. She had known something was coming, had felt it, over the past weeks as Janson had gone about the work that Tom and Wayne had found for him to do about the place—he had only been waiting, finishing up chores he knew would be easier for a younger man to do, even though she realized now that he had known all along that it had many times been make-work that had been given him.

  She stared now at this girl through the haze of woodsmoke that came from beneath the black pot of boiling clothes nearby, setting her lips for a moment, then snapping: “You’re gonna rub a hole in that shirt. If it ain’t clean enough already, put it back int’ th’ pot t’ boil some more.”

  The girl stopped rubbing the shirt, dunked it back into the wash tub, and reached in for another piece of laundry, coming up with what looked to be the same shirt again, which she then set about scrubbing vigorously on the board. Deborah sighed, exasperated, and reached to sling the wash she had been beating into the girl’s tub as well, surprised when Elise only paused for a moment, then went back to rubbing the shirt without saying a word. Heaven help me, Deborah prayed silently, asking God to make her not dislike the girl so much, even as she knew that her own feelings stood in the way of any intercession from the Almighty, for she could find very little even likeable within the girl. Henry and Nell would have been surprised to have seen this little piece of baggage their son had wed, even more surprised to have seen what she had brought him to—Janson working in a cotton mill, Janson working in town, for the very people who had—

  Lord, give me strength—first to find out the girl was already with child, then her absolute incompetence at anything wife-like, then, to seal forever what would probably be Deborah’s unending dislike of her, the girl had burst into tears when Deborah had told her she would be the one to midwife her child at its birth. Elise had thrown herself on her bed and cried until Janson had promised her a doctor to bring the baby—a doctor, when money was so precious; a doctor, when Deborah had helped bring into the world more babies than anyone else in this county, when she had brought Janson himself into the world, and now she was not good enough for—

  Deborah slung a new handful of wash onto the battling block and began to beat it even harder than necessary with the stick, considering the girl’s figure, too flat-chested and still too skinny, even though she was already beginning to show with child. She was a pretty little thing, Deborah had to grant her that much, and she could see how Janson might have been attracted to her, with her reddish-gold hair and blue eyes, but Deborah would never have thought it possible that he would have had his head turned to such a degree by this sort of girl, so modern, not at all the sort of girl he had been raised to marry. She had even allowed herself the worry that the child the girl carried might not be Janson’s—but she had voiced that concern to no one but Tom, and then only in the privacy of their bed in the night. Tom had told her to hush her mouth, that Elise seemed a good girl, and that Janson loved her dearly. Tom believed the girl loved Janson as well—men could be such gullible fools about some things, Deborah told herself. Such gullible fools.

  She heard the front door of the house open and close, and a man’s footsteps on the porch, and then descending the steps toward the yard. A moment later Janson walked around the edge of the house, coming toward them where they worked in the side yard. He was dressed neatly in his best dungarees and a work shirt that was neatly pressed, though worn and frayed both at the cuffs and neck. His shoes were knotted together at the strings and slung over one shoulder, and his worn coat was in his hands as he walked to where his wife stood working at the washtub.

  Elise had paused in her work and was staring at him, a look on her face that Deborah had not seen there before. Janson stopped before her and dropped his shoes to the ground, then took his coat and wrapped it about her shoulders. “You ought not be out here workin’,” he said quietly, but still she did not say anything. He turned to Deborah instead. “Gran’ma, she ought not be out here in the cold with her sleeves rolled to her elbows an’ her hands in that water. With th’ baby an’ all, she ought t’ be inside.”

  Deborah looked at the girl and actually felt a twinge of guilt, realizing she had been working her so hard simply due to her own anger. She herself had worked harder than this throughout each of her own pregnancies, but this girl was not accustomed to such work, to any work at all, and Deborah had known that.

  “I’m all right,” Elise said at last, drying her hands on the too-big apron Deborah had given her to wear, and then reaching back to take Janson’s coat from her shoulders and hold it up for him to slip it on. Janson’s hands closed over hers instead as she held the coat for him, and he looked down at her for a moment.

  “I’ll be back soon as I can,” he said. “Don’t be worried if it’s late.”

  “I won’t be. I just hope someone will stop to give you a ride into town, so you don’t have to walk so far.”

  “Somebody probably will. If not, I’ll walk it; I’ve done it before.”

  She nodded, and after a moment he drew her closer, holding her against him as his mouth came to hers. Deborah cleared her throat self-consciously, and, after a moment they separated, Janson finally moving to allow her to help him with his coat, and then turning back to look at her again.

  “You go in an’ rest in a little while, you hear me?” he told her, and she nodded. He glanced at his grandmother for a moment, but did not say anything more, then he turned to look about the yard, toward the sharecropped house one more time, toward the fields where the dry cotton plants had recently been turned under, his eyes moving over the red land in a way that Deborah had so often seen before. For a moment he looked torn. There was a longing in him that she could almost feel—and then it was gone.

  He straightened his back and turned his eyes toward his wife again, a brief smile touching his lips as he looked at her one last time before taking up his shoes and starting toward the road that would take him into town and away from the only kind of life he had known throughout his twenty years. Deborah watched him go, seeing him turn back to wave toward them before the rise of the land could cut off sight of the house behind him. She saw the girl wave in return, but Deborah did not. She could only turn back to her work, thinking of the years her son Henry had spent in that cotton mill, and of how often she had heard him swear that his son would have a better life.

  Walter Eason sat in his office at the mill that morning, listening to the words of his son, Walt, but his eyes never left the hands folded neatly atop the massive oak desk, his own hands—his knuckles were large, his fingers long and tapering. Dark veins stood out along the backs of both hands; his nails were neatly groomed. Here and there were signs of his seven
ty-plus years, but the aging did not bother him. His hands were steadier still than many a younger man’s; they still held strength and assurance, as well as the wisdom he hoped that his years had brought him. They were hands that held influence far beyond this mill or Eason County, or even Alabama itself, hands that he was proud of, as he was proud of anything that was his own.

  Walter sat looking at his hands as his son, sitting at the far side of the desk in a leather-covered armchair, delivered news that Walter did not want to hear. He listened, until long after the younger man had finished talking, but still did not say a word. He heard the shifting of his son’s abundant weight in the other chair, the creak of the upholstery, the clearing of a throat, a waiting and then silence, then he lifted his gray eyes and considered the man opposite him.

  His only grandson, Walt’s only son and Walter’s hope for the future of his family and of his county, was causing difficulties again—but Buddy had been causing difficulties almost from his birth. Only the family name had kept him out of trouble with the law on several occasions in his eighteen years, but even the Eason name could not go on protecting him forever. He had to grow up someday if he were ever to assume the responsibility that would one day come to him.