Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  “She wants to see Elise, and she wants to see her grandchild—you need to send for them, William, and soon.” Matt looked at him with eyes filled with sympathy. William wanted to tell him that he did not want his sympathy, that he did not need it—Martha would be fine.

  “Martha wanted to write Elise herself, to tell her, and to ask her to bring the baby as soon as she can—she had the letter ready before I got here, William; she already knew.”

  The words seemed difficult for him, painful to speak or even to think about. Matt had been a good friend for so many years—but he was wrong just this one time.

  “I think you should post this to Elise today, William, and, to be honest with you, I think you should telephone as well. It would be easier for her to hear it from you instead of reading it in a letter, and, there would be more of a chance she might get here in time.” Matt seemed to look at him closely for a moment. “I’ll be happy to call Elise for you, and to post the letter as well, if you would like.” He held out a hand, a hand William just stared at for a moment before shaking his head.

  “No,” he said, straightening his back and meeting Matt’s gaze levelly. “No—I’ll take care of it myself—”

  Matt looked at him for a moment, then moved to get his black bag from the sofa where he had set it upon coming downstairs. He took up his hat and looked at William again, then asked, “Will you be all right, William?”

  “Yes—of course, I’ll be fine. Thank you, Matt. Thank you very much.” He walked the doctor to the door, then stood on the veranda and watched as the doctor descended the steps to the yard below.

  Matt turned back to him. “Don’t forget to post that letter, William, and to telephone Elise—”

  “I won’t.” William turned and went back into the house without waiting for the doctor to drive away. He closed the door and looked toward the staircase and up, toward the upstairs where Martha slept under the watchful presence of Mattie Ruth. After a moment he looked down at the letter in his hands—Matt had to be wrong; he was mistaken. Martha could not die. She could not—

  He stared at the envelope with his daughter’s address written on it in a hand that seemed a shaky imitation of Martha’s own careful one—Elise was gone to him, as gone in life as Alfred was in death. When she had first left, he had thought she would return, that she would get tired of the life her farmhand could give her, and that she would come home, but, after months had passed and she had stayed away, he had tried to put her out of his mind. He could not face seeing her now, not her, or the child she had borne by her half-breed farmhand. Bill was gone from the house, living on his own in town, having divorced himself from his father and his family, and William worried now to think of the kind of man his eldest son had become. Stan was silent and distant, looking at William with distrust after what had happened with Elise and the half-Cherokee dirt farmer. Martha was all that William had left now—she could not be dying. She could not be—

  He stared at the envelope for a moment longer, then ripped it in half—Martha was ill now, but she would get better. She needed all of his energy and strength to help her—he could not be worrying about Elise and the farmhand. He could not allow Elise to come home with her child to tire her mother out. Later, when Martha was better, he would tell her what he had done, and his reasons for doing it. Later, when Martha was better—

  He shoved the torn halves of the envelope beneath the family Bible on the nearby hall table, the Bible where generations of Whitley births and deaths had been recorded, then took up Martha’s needlepoint from the tabletop where she had left it in passing earlier in the day. She would want her needlework, he told himself; it would help her to pass the time until she could be up and about again.

  He started up the stairs, carrying the needlepoint in his hand—later, when she was better, she would understand why he had done what he had to do. She would understand—she always understood.

  Chapter Four

  A pounding at the front door of the mill house woke Elise and Janson from a sound sleep. She had been awake more than half the night with the baby, and had fallen into a deep sleep that morning with the four-week-old Henry at last quiet between her chest and Janson there on the bed, the daylight showing at the edges of the drawn curtains unable to keep her awake for once.

  The pounding came again at the door, waking the baby and setting him into loud wails. Elise hurriedly got out of bed and pulled her wrap on over her nightgown, knowing that Janson’s grandmother would lecture her severely for being up and about for at least another two weeks, for Deborah Sanders had already done so twice since the baby had been born. “I’m coming,” she called, glancing at Janson as he sat up in bed. They both knew it was out of the ordinary for someone to be knocking at their door at this time of day with the “Day Sleeper” sign nailed so obviously to the front door. Everyone the village over knew never to disturb the house of a day sleeper in the daylight hours.

  A knot of worry tightened in her stomach as she pulled her wrap closer and opened the door. She recognized the boy on the porch as the one who worked at the village grocery and wondered what he could want that was important enough to disturb Janson’s sleep, much less to set the baby to crying again after he had kept her awake most of the night.

  “There’s a telephone call for you at th’ store,” he said, pulling at his cap and shifting from one foot to the other as he stared up at her.

  “For us? Are you sure?”

  “Yes’m, for Mrs. Janson Sanders—”

  “For me?” The knot inside of her increased. Telephone calls had once been everyday affairs at her home in Georgia, but here, in the village, there were few telephones, and few calls. A telephone call had to be important, and that could mean but few things—sickness, emergency, death. “From who? Did they say?”

  “Mr. Leon said it was from Georgia, from your brother—” The boy fidgeted from one foot to the other, pulling at his cap again. “You gonna come get it?”

  “Yes—yes, we’ll be right there.” She shut the door in the boy’s face without giving him another thought and turned to see Janson pulling on his dungarees. “It’s Stan—”

  “Yeah, I know,” he said, struggling with his clothes.

  She moved toward the crying baby where he now lay alone in the middle of the bed, then her clothes, then stopped in the middle of the floor without ever reaching either. “It—it has to be trouble. Someone’s hurt, or sick, or—” She turned toward Janson and her words stopped.

  She could see on his face that he was thinking the same thing.

  Everyone was walking a wide berth around Buddy Eason that morning as he lounged in front of McCallum Grocery. He sat in a straight chair with his legs stuck out before him, trying to obstruct the sidewalk enough to bother anyone who might pass on their way into any of the four stores there on the quiet village street. He found it annoying that the mill families were moving quietly around him, avoiding any contact with his long legs, carefully keeping their eyes averted from his own as if he were not really there, and speaking in quiet tones so that he could not hear what they were saying. Even the three old men whose usual domain he had invaded on this hot summer morning were quieter than usual. They sat as they always sat, in their chairs on the other side of the pickle and cracker barrels, chewing their tobacco, spitting on the walkway, and staring at the village street through yellowing eyes, but today they were silent. Usually they would have been arguing politics or religion, gossiping freely about their neighbors, criticizing their friends and the world in general, reliving their lives in stories that grew grander and more fantastic with each telling—but not this morning. This morning they might not even have been there, except for the wheezing of old man Webber, the smell of rank tobacco from fat old Marcus’s cigar, or the occasional streams of tobacco juice from old man Jefferson where he sat tapping his walking cane on the ground at his feet.

  Buddy was bored. He had called
insults and slights out to the young men who passed, grabbed at the teenage girls, tormented and frightened the smaller children, harassed the old men, and propositioned the women, until they had all begun to cross to the other side of the street to avoid him, and the normally steady foot traffic to and from the stores had thinned to a trickle. He would have moved on to find a more interesting diversion if he had not told Richard and Carl to meet him here. Now he was stuck here, with little or nothing to do.

  He turned to lift the lid from the barrel beside him, then reached inside to fish out a pickle before dropping the lid on the ground at his feet. He sat back and chewed on his prize for a moment, looking around, his eyes finally coming to rest on old Amos Jefferson. Buddy glared at him for a moment, until the old man stopped tapping his cane on the ground and stared back. Jefferson looked away and let loose a stream of tobacco juice from the side of his mouth, then brought his eyes back to Buddy—they were gray eyes, old eyes, just like Buddy’s grandfather’s, and these eyes, just like Walter Eason’s, were not afraid of him.

  “What are you looking at, you old fart?” Buddy demanded, sitting up to better stare at him.

  “I ain’t lookin’ at nothin’,” the old man said, and spat on the ground again. “Nothin’ at all—” He wiped at his mouth with one hand and sat back in his chair, continuing to stare at Buddy.

  Buddy started to get to his feet, determined to wipe the look from the old man’s face, but his eyes caught sight of someone crossing the street coming toward them, and he stopped. Janson Sanders was staring directly at him as he crossed toward the grocery, his wife beside him. Janson kept one arm around the girl’s shoulders, and Buddy took the time to look her over, as much to bother Sanders as to satisfy himself—she looked good now that she had lost the belly, the baby now in her arms and wrapped in a faded blanket. Her hair was a bit longer, the bobbed hairstyle growing out, the sun hitting it just right to make it look more red than gold at the moment. She was wearing a cotton print dress that was too long, coming to several inches past her knees, and covering up too much of her legs, Buddy thought as he stared at her—they were nice legs, wasted on that half-Indian millhand.

  He raised his eyes back to Janson Sanders as they drew near, tossing the half-eaten pickle back into the barrel he had taken it from without another thought, then he rose to step directly into their path as they approached the front of the grocery. “Where do you think you’re going, you red-nigger? This store’s no place for red-Indian trash like you—”

  “Get outta my way, Buddy. I ain’t got time t’ fool with you—” There was anger in the green eyes, and hatred as well.

  “You’d better learn some manners, boy. You can’t go talking to white folks like that.”

  “Go on, Elise,” Janson said, motioning with his head and guiding his wife around Buddy, all the while continuing to stand his ground. “Go on an’ take th’ call,” he told her. “I’ll be right in.”

  Buddy watched her as she brought her eyes to the eyes of her husband, then the girl turned away without ever looking at Buddy directly and walked past him and into the store, the baby held close in her arms. He could see her through the front windows of the grocery, going to the storekeeper for a moment, then allowing old McCallum’s wife to take the baby from her as she went to the telephone hanging on the wall near the windows. She took the earpiece from its cradle, and, holding it to her ear, she turned the crank and stood on tiptoe to speak into the small mouthpiece attached to the box on the wall. Buddy could hear her through the screen door at the front of the store. “Hello—hello—could you get operator four in Goodwin, Endicott County, Georgia—”

  He watched her for a moment, then turned his eyes back to Janson Sanders. “That’s a good looking woman, but she’s wasted on you. Who knows, maybe me and a couple of my friends’ll show her what its like to have a real man one night while you’re at work in the mill, one of us right after the other. She might have herself a white baby the next time—”

  The last words had only barely cleared Buddy’s lips when Janson was on him, surprising him and knocking him backwards into the chair he had been sitting in, sending it over onto its back, and almost upsetting the barrel nearby as Janson pinned him with one arm trapped beneath him under the chair back. Janson held his right forearm tight across Buddy’s windpipe. “I’m gonna break your goddamn neck, like I should’a done years ago. I’m gonna—”

  But there was a sudden cry from within the store, then words that were near unintelligible for the horror evident in them: “Mama—oh, God, no—she can’t be dead—no—!”

  Janson released him and Buddy pushed himself to his feet, then turned to watch the screen door slam behind Janson as he made his way into the store. Buddy watched through the window as the girl collapsed against him when he reached her side. Janson took the earpiece from her hand and spoke into the telephone briefly, then hung it up.

  She was crying, shaking with great, heaving sobs that Buddy could see even from that distance, her hands over her face as Janson held her against him. Buddy watched them, watched the sympathy that came to the faces of others in the room, but he could feel nothing, nothing but hatred.

  And a determination to make Janson Sanders wish that he had been the one to die today.

  The interior of the train that afternoon was a world of heat and sweating bodies. Janson sat beside Elise, staring past her and out the window at her side as the locomotive jerked and started along the tracks on the trip toward Georgia and the home where Elise had spent the first sixteen years of her life. She was crying, silent and staring out the window while the baby slept in her arms—Janson knew that he had failed her today. She had been alone when she had received the news that her mother had died—alone, because he had allowed his temper to get the better of him. He knew that he would never have regretted giving Buddy Eason what he deserved, but he would always regret that he had not been there for Elise when she had needed him. He had failed her, just as he had failed her before back in Endicott County when he had allowed her to stay in her father’s house months after they should have left—they should have gone immediately the day she had agreed to marry him, just as she had wanted.

  Instead they had stayed as he had worked to earn the money they would need to buy back his land, money they had lost anyway, and he had left her in her father’s home until her father had found out about them and had hit her—the memory of her bruised face stayed with him still, even all these months later. The memory of her bruised face, and her father’s words when he had at last driven them from his land: “You’re both dead to me now. I no longer have a daughter.”

  Whitley had said that he would kill Janson if they ever returned to Endicott County, but that did not concern him now. Surely Whitley would allow her to return home now, surely he would allow her to mourn for her mother in peace. She should not even be making the trip yet, only four weeks after having given birth, but Janson knew she had to go. He had been ready to give up his job in the card room and the security he had built for them in the village if necessary to go with her, but Walter Eason had surprised him, telling him to be with his wife and that his job would be waiting when he returned.

  Now he sat beside Elise, worrying at what they would find when they reached her father’s home—she needed her people. She needed her father and Stan, even her brother Bill. She needed to be Elise Whitley again, even for just a time. Surely her father would allow that.

  But the words would not leave him: “You’re both dead to me now. I no longer have a daughter.”

  Martha Whitley had come home for the last time, home to the parlor she had loved so well, to the family to whom she had devoted her life. She lay amid banks of flowers in the front parlor, looking as if she were asleep. William sat in a chair near the casket, holding her unfinished needlework in his hands, his eyes on her face, his mind telling him that she would have to open her eyes soon to say that it was all a mistake. She lo
oked so much as she had looked on so many mornings when he had waked before her, so peaceful, sleeping—she could not be dead. She could not be—

  Family and friends filled the rooms of the house, moving quietly about him, speaking in hushed tones, talking of what a good woman she had been, what a good mother and wife, how devoted she had been to her family and to the church. The minister and his wife had been in the house almost from the moment Martha had died, trying to console William, trying to get him to eat, but he could do nothing but sit and stare. He could not move from where he was, could not leave her or stop looking at the face that would so soon be shut away—she had to wake up, he kept telling himself. She had to. This could not be real. This could not be—

  William had cried, for only the second time he could remember since he had been a small boy, when Martha left him. He had been sitting holding her hand, talking to her quietly, when it happened. He had screamed for help, had tried to lift her into his arms—she could not die. She could not—

  The scent of the flowers was overpowering, the presence of the family, neighbors, and friends an intrusion—he wanted to be alone with her, to say goodbye in private if he had to, to cry as he could not before all these people. A knot sat firmly in the back of his throat, a pressure behind his eyes—Martha was dead. His Martha was dead, and, after these days of flowers and condolences from people who could never have known or loved her as he did, he would never see her again. They would put her into the ground, and he would be alone.

  Bill was here, for the first time in months, not having come to see his mother even in the last days—he was talking business with someone William had never seen before, talking business as he sat only a few feet from his mother’s casket. It angered William that he could conduct business here, today.