Through a Glass, Darkly

by Charlotte Miller

  “I’ve got you, an’ that’s all that matters,” he told her, “you, Henry, Catherine, and Judith.”

  “But, you’ve always said—”

  “I wanted you,” he said, not letting her finish the words. “We got a son, an’ two daughters, an’ we’re together—what more could any man want—”

  Elise had long ago concluded that there was very little of herself in at least two of her three children. Henry, at eight, was so much like Janson that at times it was startling to Elise. Judith, as well, was very much like her father, with the same black hair and green eyes. At four years old, she often sided with her brother against Catherine, and the two of them seemed to delight in annoying the older girl, which Elise knew Catherine oftentimes brought on herself, for Catherine could be high-handed and bossy.

  Catherine looked little like either Henry or Judith, for she had her mother’s lighter coloring and reddish-gold hair. Even as a baby she had been a “prissy little thing,” as Janson’s grandmother had often referred to her, and now, at six, that prissiness had become part of her nature. She reminded Elise of how she had been as a child, and for that very reason she irritated her to no ends at times, for she could remember herself doing many of the same things she could now see Catherine doing.

  Henry, at eight, seemed more like Janson every day. Tall for his age, with the same black hair and darker coloring that spoke of Janson’s Cherokee heritage, he not only resembled his father, but was like him in temperament as well. He was even more outspoken than Janson, with a temper that often surpassed even that of either of his parents or his sisters, and a tendency to speak too quickly and without thinking that reminded Elise mostly of herself.

  His temper and quick tongue often managed to get him into trouble in school, where he showed no fear of taking on bigger boys, even if outnumbered, if he were provoked. Elise knew that he was no bully, for he knew that Janson would wear a belt out on him if he were found bullying other children, but there was no doubt within Janson or Elise that Henry would never shy away from a fight when it became necessary—and it seemed that it often became necessary. On more than one occasion already in the few years he had been in school, he had come home with a bloody nose or a blacked eye, keeping Elise in a constant turmoil over her temperamental son.

  “Who started it?” she would ask, to which she would always receive the same reply:

  “He did,” without the boy ever supplying a name to his mother—to have done so, Elise knew, would have been less than manly.

  “He hit you first?”

  “I didn’t say that—I said he started it,” Henry would answer. Words were as much provocation to fight in Henry’s opinion, as his mother had already learned, as any physical threat could ever be. He had his father’s pride, and he was never unwilling to respond in his own way to insults or verbal harassment that was aimed at him, his sisters, or his family.

  “What did he say?” Elise would ask, hearing the exasperation she often felt now evident in her voice. Or: “What did he call you?”

  There were a thousand reasons for a fight: “He called me Geronimo,” because Henry’s Cherokee heritage through Janson was often the cause for teasing; “He said Pa was a Holy Roller,” after a fight with the son of the Baptist preacher; or, “He said there was patches on the seat of my overalls,” and even worse yet, “He said Catherine’s dress came from the relief.”

  Janson tried to be stern with his son, disciplining him as sternly as he had been disciplined as a boy, but Elise knew that he always came away from the punishment shaken. The worst problems always brought the boy a whipping with a belt by Janson—but it often seemed to take more out of Janson than it did out of Henry.

  “He’s just like I was at his age, just as damn stubborn and pig-headed,” he would tell Elise later. “My pa’d whip me with his belt, an’ I’d go right back out an’ do it again th’ next day.”

  Henry was not the best student, unlike Catherine, who took easily to book learning. He did not like to read, and liked arithmetic even less. His cursive writing was barely readable, and his print was little better, for he reversed letters and spelled words in creative ways. His mind was always on fishing, on the outdoors, on the woods, or on something he had planned to do after school—on anything but what his mind should be on.

  “I don’t see no reason to learn this,” he would say when something did not hold his attention. “Won’t nobody ever use it.”

  “You don’t see any reason to learn it, because you don’t believe anyone will ever make use of it—” Elise would correct with growing impatience. “But, you will learn it, and you will make use of it.”

  “I just don’t see no reason.”

  “Any reason—” she would correct for the hundredth time.

  Janson would sit in silence during the frequent battles over school, not looking at either of them, and never discussing the matter with her later. He wanted Henry, and the girls as well, to have an education, the best he and Elise could provide for them, but that was Elise’s domain—she knew that and understood it as clearly from his silence as she ever could from words. The picture of him struggling through that signature would be forever fresh in her mind, as would the shame that had been on his face on the day when she had learned that he could barely read or write—that would never happen to their children. They both wanted better than that for Henry, for Catherine, and for Judith.

  Elise had seen the bigger, older children left on the rows with the younger children in the two-room schoolhouse that Henry and Catherine attended there in the country, children forever behind from repeated absences to work the farms, forever behind with no hope of ever catching up, only occasionally passed to another grade, a different row, out of kindness, or from a sheer desire to be rid of trying to teach the same thing to the same child year after year—that would never happen to her children. It had happened to her husband—but not to their children.

  Elise knew that Janson was, for the most part, illiterate, but she was the only one who knew. The children did not know, and Stan did not know. Perhaps Gran’ma had known, but, if she had, the knowledge had died with her. He had invented uncountable ways to hide it—his eyes would be tired if the girls asked him to read to them; the light was not good enough; his throat scratchy, their mother’s voice much more pleasant, and he would like to hear Elise read as well—then he would sit in silence with Judith on his lap and stare into the fire, not even hearing the words that she read. His inability to read and to write was the one thing Elise knew his pride could not make right. All other assaults on his dignity were from without, but this was from within, something he could not fight, could not conquer. Elise knew the children would never know their father could only barely read or write, and the secret would die with her as well—his pride; his damned, stubborn pride, but it was such a part of him that she knew she could never fight it.

  Janson had put Henry to work chopping cotton, hoeing, picking, and doing other work in the fields the year he turned six, and this year he put Catherine to work as well. Judith would join them in a few years. Until then there were chores to be done, but still time for play, still time for being a child. At six there was school, and the fields to contend with as well, but unlike other farmers in the area, Janson did not set a quota of cotton that he expected each child to pick, or punish a child who could not or did not meet the standard.

  “You do your best, an’ that’s enough. You do any less, an’ you know somebody else’ll have t’ make up for it—that ain’t th’ way things ’r done aroun’ here,” he told each, and set them to work.

  It was the first year that Janson expected Catherine to help pick cotton, but she was of little help in the fields. She spent her time dawdling down the rows, and would end the day with little having been picked into her sack, even on days when Judith and Henry had left her alone, which was not often. Henry picked a remarkable amount for a boy his age, as Janso
n expected him to, though Henry hated it almost as much as he hated school—picking cotton was something he could not get out of, and the sooner it was done, the sooner he could go fishing, or trapping the rabbits he invariably let go, or doing whatever else that could hold his fancy. School never seemed to end; it was always there, so there was no use for working hard—you couldn’t get it over with, and, to an eight-year-old, there were so many other things more inviting and interesting.

  It was hard to keep Henry’s mind on anything that did not interest him—fishing, being outdoors, exploring the woods, playing with the dogs. Those things interested him. Chores, picking cotton, helping his mother, his father, or his Uncle Stan, were things that had to be done, and things to be gotten over quickly and well enough not to get into trouble over. But school—and, worse still, church—Henry saw no reason for either, and made his opinions evident in his manner and attitude at every opportunity.

  The little schoolhouse had closed down for its customary break that fall of 1936 to allow the farm children to pick cotton, which had left Henry and Catherine with their days free to spend in the fields with the remainder of the family. Henry had not gotten a break from learning, however, for Elise had him working problems or reading with her every evening once the work and supper were finished. The boy had enough trouble during the seven months that school was in; she was determined he would not fall behind just because the little two-room school had closed its doors.

  That night Henry had been working arithmetic problems his Uncle Stan had for him when supper was finished. Elise planned to have him read with her as soon as he completed the problems. The copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer they had been reading in the previous evening sat beside his paper now, being shoved slowly farther and farther away, as if he thought distancing himself from the volume would allow him to avoid opening it sometime that night. He sat now, his head in his hands, as he stared at the paper. Elise watched, knowing he would never finish if he did not pick up the pencil, but she also knew it would do no good to push him.

  Judith was sitting opposite her brother at the eating table, watching Janson where he sat nearby weaving a basket from white oak splits he had prepared over the past days. Her sister was lying stomach-down on the floor near the fireplace, flipping through the pages of a moving picture magazine that Mrs. Stubblefield had given her, while Stan sat with a ragged copy of Anthony Adverse held so that he could better see to read the print by the lamp on the table between where he sat and where Elise worked at her sewing.

  The backless and well-worn novel in her brother’s hands was one Stan had gotten in trade for a load of firewood he brought in for Mrs. Stubblefield. She had been ready to throw it out, considering the condition of the book when she had gotten it second-hand, and the fact that it did not hold her interest, bestseller or not, as it had been back in ’33 and ’34. He told Elise that the old woman had thought him crazy to take it in exchange for work, but she could never know the pleasure that both he and Elise received from having something new to read. They took turns with it now, whenever one or the other could find the time, treating the badly handled book as the treasure it was to them, putting it away on top of the chifforobe between readings, out of the reach of children’s destructive hands. Everyone was talking now about a new book written by a lady who lived in Atlanta, just as they had talked about Anthony Adverse a few years before, and Elise was as curious as anyone to read this new book, but knew it was unlikely she would find a copy of Gone With the Wind that could be taken in trade for her sewing or for Stan’s split kindling.

  Henry had been bent over his problems for a little more than half an hour when the frustration finally got the better of him. He made a disgusted sound, then again when the first received no response. He shoved the paper away and sat back on the bench, folding his arms across his chest and meeting Elise’s eyes where she sat sewing in her rocker near the fireplace.

  “Henry, get your paper and finish your work,” Elise said, looking at him, then returning to hand-basting the seam in the blouse she was making for Mrs. Stubblefield. She heard Henry make another disgusted sound.

  “Won’t nobody ever use this stuff,” he said, giving the paper another push for good measure.

  “Henry—”

  “It’s just a waste of time!”

  “Henry, you heard me—”

  He gave the paper another shove, and this time the copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as well. “What good’ll it do; I ain’t never gonna use it. Bruce Langford’s pa lets him stay out of school until all their cotton’s picked, and I could—”

  “Henry—”

  He gave the paper and book another good shove, this time onto the bare wooden floor. “School ain’t no use—ask pa; he didn’t go much further in school than me, and he does just fine. Ask him—school ain’t no use to nobody—”

  Elise saw the look that came to Janson’s face. His hands had stilled at the basket he had been working on, but his eyes remained fixed on it, on it, and on the splits still held between his fingers. After a moment his gaze moved to the book and paper lying on the floor, then he slowly pushed himself to his feet, stepping back over the bench there at the table. He bent to pick up the book and sheet of paper. There was a silence in the room, a silence even from Henry as Janson again sat on the bench beside Judith, opposite their son.

  Janson placed the arithmetic paper on the tabletop, then set the book atop it, his fingers moving lightly over the worn cover before he finally placed a finger beneath the edge of the cover and laid it open on the tabletop. He turned a page, and then another, then several more. Elise held her breath as she watched, for she knew—

  “Th’ t-two—” Janson began, slowly and falteringly, as he read from the page before him, “boy—boys f—fl—” He stared at the page a moment, then slowly sounded the word out, “—f—fl—lew on an’ on, t—to—tow—ard th’—” His voice went on, missing words, skipping some, sounding out so many that the sentences were unintelligible. Elise stared, the tears beginning to move down her cheeks, unable to make herself look away, even knowing the hurt inside him as she watched—her Janson, her proud Janson, and now—

  He went on, stumbling, struggling his way to the end of a sentence. Emotion choked his voice, making it shake so badly at times that it could be little understood—but not one tear was shed down his own face. Not one tear.

  “—f—f—fear—feared th—they m-m-mig-t be f—fol—fol— mig—t be f—fol—fol— f-o-l-l-o-w-e-d,” Janson spelled the word out, unable to comprehend what it meant, “—mig-t be f-fol—” His voice stopped, and he just stared for a moment at the page.

  “—be followed—” Henry said, very quietly.

  Janson nodded in silence and closed the book, then stood up, stepped back over the bench, and left out through the front door without meeting the eyes of anyone in the room.

  Elise stared long and hard at her son, not speaking, but just staring until the boy met her eyes and held them for a moment. She hoped he understood.

  She rose from the chair and laid her sewing aside, then made her way to the front door Janson had just gone through. She found him on the porch, leaning against one of the supports for the porch roof. She had intended to go to him, but found that she could not as she stood in the open front door and watched him where he looked out in the darkness over the unpicked acres of cotton. Henry might never understand what his father had done for him today, but Elise did as she stood in the shadows and watched her husband. She understood, and she knew she had married the finest man she would ever know.

  “Them charges ain’t right,” Janson said, standing with his fists clenched at his sides at the scarred old desk in the back of Stubblefield’s store. The year’s cotton crop had been picked, sold, the split made, and now Stubblefield faced him with his columns of figures and said he had not cleared enough to cover the charge at the store—Janson fought to control his temper as he st
ood staring down at the old man.

  “You callin’ me a liar, boy?” Stubblefield peered up at him through squinted eyes. Not again, Janson thought—you are not going to do this to me again.

  “I’m sayin’ that we don’t owe you that much, an’ that you know we don’t.” A whole year’s work—gone, with no money left to show for it, nothing to benefit his family. The cotton they had planted, chopped, worked, picked, sold; seeing Elise, Henry, even Catherine, in the fields—and this man said he was left owing at the end of the year.

  “Don’t nobody call me a liar, boy.” Stubblefield rose and stood staring up at him.

  “You ain’t gonna do this t’ me again this year. I worked hard—my whole family worked hard, my wife, my brother-in-law, my children, an’ we had a good crop—”

  “Well, it weren’t good enough.”

  Janson grabbed him by the collar of his dirty shirt and shoved him back against the desk. “I’ll be damned if I’ll let you get away with doin’ this t’ me again this year! I’ll be damned if I—” He was yelling into Stubblefield’s face, rage filling him. His hands shook as he clenched the grimy collar of the old man’s shirt. “You ain’t gonna cheat me again this year!”

  “Get your hands off me!” He struggled in Janson’s grasp, yelling for help from the front of the store. Janson was grabbed roughly from behind and pulled away. Rage boiled within him and he struggled against the two farmers who held him, wanting to get his hands on Stubblefield again, even for just a moment.

  He heard the old man’s voice yelling behind him as he was dragged through the store and shoved out the door and bodily thrown into the dirt beyond the store’s front porch. “I want you off my land!” Stubblefield stood shouting in the open front doorway of the store, glaring at him as Janson slowly regained his feet. “Get your family and th’ rest ’a your trash and get off my land—and don’t you ever come back!”