But he could not break the spell that held him here looking at her, could not break it even to go and order her son from the house. He knew that he should, knew that Bill had no right here after the pain he had caused his mother. She had spent her last months worrying about him. About him, and about—
The minister was kneeling beside him again, offering senseless words about God and heaven—but there could be no God. William damned the idea of God, damned the idea of heaven, damned even the devil himself—but nothing helped. Martha still lay there, peaceful, serene, dead, looking as if she were asleep.
There was a twittering of feminine voices, a note of lightness that had no place in this room. Stan moved toward him, his young face looking drawn and almost old. “How can they laugh with Mama—” His words trailed off, filled with bitterness. William only looked up at him, and then turned his eyes back to his wife. He wished he could feel comfort in the boy’s presence. He wished he could feel comfort in anything, but he knew he never would again. Martha was dead.
There was a light whispering of voices, moving from the open parlor doorway and into the room, a hush, and then a quiet murmuring as people near the doorway stepped aside for someone to enter. William could hear the whisper of gossiped words as he felt the eyes of the room move from whoever had entered to him, then back again. He lifted his eyes, seeing the quiet exchange of words behind lifted hands, then he turned his eyes toward the doorway, his hands clenching tightly on Martha’s needlework as he saw his daughter enter the room with the half-Indian farmhand she had married at her side. She held a baby in her arms, a baby wrapped in a light, faded blanket. Her face was pale and tear-streaked, her hair slightly longer, her gray dress neat and plain. She looked older, and so much like Martha.
William felt his breath catch in the back of his throat, the pain rising to choke him for a moment—so much like Martha, before years and children and worry had worn her down and had finally taken the life from her. His eyes moved back to the casket, to the face, to the memories—Martha had looked like that, so much like that. She had once looked at him with nothing but love. She had once seen only goodness in him—until Elise had taken all that from him, Elise and her farmhand. Martha’s last months had been filled with pain—Elise had caused that in choosing her farmhand, in breeding her part-Indian brat, in pushing William to do only what he had had to do to try to protect his family. Elise had taken Martha from him even months before her death, causing a distance between them that he would now never be able to bridge—Elise and her farmhand, and they dared come here even now to intrude on his grief.
He slowly rose to his feet, finding his legs were shaking beneath him as he watched Elise cross the room toward him and her mother’s casket. She had begun to cry again, her lower lip trembling, as she reached the side of the casket and looked in at her mother’s face.
Sanders put an arm around her, standing close at her side, his eyes on Martha as well as Elise reached out to touch her mother’s hand—the control within William snapped. A cry of anger and pain escaped him as he took a step forward, bracing his hand on the edge of the casket for support to still the shaking muscles in his legs. “Get out of here! Get out of my house!”
Elise took a step back, looking as if she had been struck, her blue eyes large and bright with tears, her lashes and cheeks damp. The baby in her arms began to cry, and she held it closer against her as she stared up at her father with what appeared almost to be disbelief. “Daddy, I—”
“Get out of my house, goddamn you! Get out of here, and take your squalling brat with you! Get out!” He was shaking with rage, holding out his hand that held the needlework, with one finger pointing toward the parlor doorway.
“Please—I—” She was trembling, crying so hard that she could not speak. It seemed for a moment that she would have collapsed had it not been for Sanders at her side.
“She’s got th’ right t’ be here. Mrs. Whitley was her ma—” Janson said, staring at him as he tightened the arm he held around her. “You cain’t keep her from—”
“Goddamn it—I can! Get the hell out of my house! Get off my land! Goddamn you—you killed your mother, and you dare to come back here to mourn her now! You killed her! You ran off with him and left her here to die! You killed her! Get out of my house! Get out!” He screamed the words, flailing his arm about with the needlework in his hand until he knocked over the nearby flowers and sent them crashing to the floor. “Get out, and don’t ever come back!”
The girl collapsed against Sanders as Stan reached her side, the farmhand and the boy both supporting her and the baby she still held in her arms as they led her from the room. She was crying harder, trembling so badly that the baby set into even louder wails.
“Get out of my house!” William screamed again, even after they had left his sight. “Get out!”
Everyone was staring at him, looking dumbfounded and embarrassed, pity for the girl written plainly on almost every face around him.
“Get out!” he screamed again, no longer caring who looked or who heard—he wanted them all out. He wanted—“Get out of my house! Get out, and don’t ever come back! Get out!”
The day was hot, the wind still, the heat sitting on her skin and making Elise dizzy as she stood at the graveside staring at the closed casket that held her mother. Janson was beside her, the baby asleep in his arms, but still she felt as if she were alone. Her mother was gone, but Elise could still see her so clearly in her mind, could still see her as Martha Whitley had been the day Elise had left here to be with Janson, her mother standing on the steps that led up to the front veranda of her father’s home, waving goodbye to Elise for the last time as Elise had watched her through the rear window of the Model T Ford that had taken them into town that day.
She moved her eyes now toward where her father stood beside the grave. He did not seem aware that anyone else was in the graveyard as he stared at the flowers that covered his wife’s casket. He looked old, shaken, barely able to stand, Stan’s support at his one side, and that of one of her father’s hired men, Franklin Bates, at the other, seeming to be all that kept him on his feet. Elise watched him as the Baptist minister led the mourners in prayer—he did not bow his head to pray, but just continued to stare at the casket as if there were no life left in him as well. She wanted to hate him—but she could feel nothing, no matter how hard she tried, but an aching emptiness that she knew nothing would ever fill again.
As the mourners began to file away, Elise stood watching the family and friends she had known all her life as they cried and hugged and grieved together—but no one moved toward her. They all left the graveyard, walking toward the cars in the church parking lot, Stan and Franklin Bates leading her father away as if he could no longer move on his own, until at last she, Janson, and the baby, were alone at the graveside.
“We’ve got t’ go, Elise,” Janson said. He held the baby asleep now on one arm, the other arm held around her.
“Not yet,” she said, staring at the casket. “Not yet—”
“Yes—you shouldn’t be out in this heat, an’ neither should the baby—”
The baby—yes.
The baby who would never know his grandmother.
But still she did not move.
“Elise—”
She could still see her mother standing on the steps, waving to her—
And the men standing nearby now, waiting for them to leave so they could put her mother into the ground.
Her mother waving—
She felt the edges of her vision darkening, her face becoming cold and clammy even in the heat of the day, all sense of the graveyard fading about her as her knees gave way and she fainted there against Janson’s side.
It was late that afternoon before Janson would allow her to return to the cemetery. He had taken her back to the hotel and had made her lie down for most of the day, and had only reluctantly agreed to their
returning to the graveyard when she had threatened that she would come alone if he would not accompany her—she had to see her mother’s grave one last time before they returned to Alabama. She had not been here when her mother had died, and had been driven from her father’s house when she had gone there to mourn her passing—this was all she had left, the only way remaining to say goodbye.
Janson stood nearby holding the baby in his arms as Elise sat on the ground at the graveside, her eyes on the flowers that covered the raw mound of earth. Her mother had always loved flowers—but these did little to cover the ugliness of the red earth newly turned, the red earth that now held her mother. She reached toward one of the blooms, but drew her hand back a moment before touching the petals as she realized how badly it had already begun to wilt in the summer heat—there was no life left in it. No life left in the grave that it covered.
She sat for a long time, tears moving down her cheeks until she could cry no more, but still she continued to stare. Janson knelt beside her, saying something that she could not understand, and she realized that the baby was crying—but she could not make herself move. She could only see in her mind that sad, tearful woman who had stood on the front steps waving to her as she had left that day.
She did not realize they were no longer alone in the graveyard until Stan was kneeling at her side. “Elise, are you okay?” he asked, in a voice that brought back memories that choked her. She only nodded, not taking her eyes from the grave. From the edge of her vision she saw him look up to Janson, and then back to her before he reached to take something from his pocket. “I went to the hotel to try to find you. When you weren’t there, I knew you’d be here. There’s something I think you should see.”
He held a paper out to her, but she did not turn to look at it.
“Elise, I think you should. It’s from Mama—”
She brought her eyes to him. “But—”
He nodded. “She must have known—” For a moment his words fell silent, and he looked away. “I was going to write the date that—that Mama—” Again, he fell silent, bringing his eyes back to her. “This was underneath the family Bible when I picked it up, torn in half like this. She must have written it right after she found out that she was dying. She wanted you to come home; she wanted to see your baby. She must have thought Daddy mailed it.”
Elise brought her eyes fully to the paper in his hands, to the torn halves of a letter she had never received. When she reached for it her hands were trembling, and they began to tremble even more as she recognized the handwriting that she had never thought she would see again. She carefully unfolded the torn paper, smoothing it out on her lap and holding the two sides together so that she could read her mother’s words.
“My dearest Elise . . .”
She began to cry anew as she read, having to wipe away tears so she could see the words—her mother had wanted to see her. Her mother had sent for her, had wanted her to bring Henry. Her mother had—
There was so much love in the words, so much of the mother she would never know again—and her father had kept them apart during her mother’s last days.
Martha Whitley’s last words to her daughter were about Janson:
“I can remember wishing the two of you had never met, because he took my little girl away, but I know now that your meeting was what was meant to be. Janson will take care of you, and he will love you and my little grandson. He is a good man, Elise, and, even though you will never have an easy life for being his wife, I know he will do everything he can to provide for you. I know he loves you, and I know how much you love him—it was so obvious when you looked at each other. If only your father had not been so blind . . .”
If only your father had not been so blind . . .
Janson was there suddenly, holding the baby, holding her as well as she cried, even before she knew how she had gotten into his arms. He held her for a long time, letting her cry, until Henry began to cry in earnest and she took him.
“We’d better get back t’ th’ hotel,” Janson said, looking at her now, touching her face. “You need some rest, an’ so does Henry.”
Elise looked toward her brother, and he managed a smile and a nod. Stan walked back to the hotel with them, more silent than she had ever known him in their years of growing up, and he left them once they had reached their room, hugging her and kissing her one last time before he was gone.
Elise slept little that night, as memories of her mother and her childhood came back to her. She was tired when the sun rose the next morning, and did not argue when Janson said she should rest at the hotel until time for them to leave. He reluctantly left her to go to check the train schedule, leaving Elise feeling alone as she sat on the edge of the bed watching the baby sleep. There was a tap at the door and she got up to answer it, afraid that it might be someone her father had sent to drive her from the hotel as he had driven her from his house, but instead she found J. C. Cooper standing there.
“I saw you and Janson at a distance at the funeral, and Stan told me you were staying here,” he said. Elise hugged him, tears coming with the sympathy that showed on his face. “I wanted to tell you how sorry I am—”
“Thank you. You don’t know how good it is to see you—I was feeling pretty alone.” She led him into the room, closing the door.
“Where’s Janson?”
“He went to check on the train schedules, for us to go back to—” she caught herself and changed what she had been about to say, “to go back home.” Why had she found it so strange to call Eason County home after all the months spent there? This place no longer seemed home, but it had been so hard to say it, to call the village and their half of a house home. It was as if she had awakened from a long sleep, and now Pine seemed less than real, their rooms in the mill house like something from a dream.
She brought her mind back to J.C.’s words and his presence, enjoying his company, looking at his face and seeing there one of the best friends she had ever known.
“I heard you had a baby.” He bent over Henry where he slept between pillows on the bed, watching the baby move one fist slightly in his sleep. “He looks like Janson.”
“Yes, he does,” Elise said, smiling as she looked at her son. She bent to lightly touch the small cheek, then sat on the bed beside the baby and looked up at J.C.. “His name is Henry; it was Janson’s father’s name.”
“Henry—that’s nice. I wish we would—” Then he fell silent, seeming somehow distant for a moment. He brought his attention back to her, smiling, rather falsely, she thought. “Phyllis Ann and I are married,” he said at last.
“Oh? That’s very nice.” She tried to make her words show happiness for him, but they rang hollow even to her own ears—she just felt pity for him. Pity for any man who had joined his life to Phyllis Ann Bennett.
“We were married in April; it rained like the devil all day—but I don’t believe in old wives tales, do you? She was a lovely bride—” He chattered on, too gaily, as he pushed his glasses up off the bridge of his nose with a finger. Elise had been so happy to see him, as he had been to see her, even in these circumstances—but now the visit was ruined. They both pretended there was not a tension between them, but each knew the other pretended. Phyllis Ann stood between them now, as surely as if she were in the room, straining a kinship that had once been almost as brother and sister. They talked to fill the silence, but both were relieved when J. C. stood to leave.
“I’m glad I got to see you,” she said, walking him to the door with her arm hooked firmly through his.
“I’m glad I got to see you, too.” He hugged her briefly and kissed her cheek, then turned to leave, but stopped and turned back, looking at her for a moment. “You’re happy, aren’t you?” he asked, the false gaiety now gone from his face.
She thought for a moment, then answered. “I’m glad that I married Janson. I’m happy that we’re together, and that we
have Henry.”
He nodded, then turned away.
“Are you happy?” she asked, then immediately regretted the words as he brought his eyes back to her.
He was silent for a long moment, distant in his own feeling and thought. “There are a lot of things you don’t have any choice in. I guess who you fall in love with is one of them,” he said, his eyes on her. “It doesn’t always make you happy, but it could be so much worse; it would be worse to live without her—I—” he sighed and looked away, “I don’t know.” He shook his head.
Elise put her hand on his arm, understanding perhaps more than he could ever know, her mind going to the village, to Eason County waiting for her.
J. C. brought his eyes back to her, a look of understanding passing between them. “Goodbye, Elise.”
“Goodbye, J. C.” And he was gone, her sympathy going with him.
Chapter Five
Children filled the front of Perryman Street Baptist Church in the mill village the last Sunday evening before Christmas. There were angels dressed in sheets whose halos looked to be made from coat hangers, shepherds in burlap sack robes, and a Mary and Joseph clothed in what had obviously been curtain material. Elise sat in the third pew on the right-hand side with Henry on her lap, smiling as she watched the tiny Mary give the much larger Joseph his line for the third time.
Janson’s cousin, Sissy, sat beside Elise. Sissy had been staying at the mill house with them since the end of summer, when Buddy Eason’s trips down their street at last had frayed Elise’s nerves to such an extent that she had become afraid to be alone in the house at night with the baby while Janson was at work. At Sissy’s other side was Tim Cauthen, whose family had moved into the village over the summer, his father, James Cauthen, having been brought all the way from Florence, near the Tennessee line, to take a job as roller coverer in the mill. Beside Tim was Wheeler James Keith. Wheeler James was two years older than Tim and three years older than Sissy, but, to anyone who saw the three of them, it was obvious that both boys had been interested in Sissy since she had come to stay in the village. Over the past months at least one of them was usually at her side during church services.
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