Backland Graces; Four Short Novels

by Hal Zina Bennett

  Loman had seen it happen to friends who’d gone churchy. Like Aiden, his best pal in high school, who started messing around with Alma, the preacher’s daughter, and had, in the end, joined the church because he was afraid not to.

  “I’d damn well go to hell,” he’d told Loman, “because of what she and I done. She told me something I never knew.” After they baptized Aiden, down at the river, with Loman watching in the bushes, his friend changed, became someone he never was, all because of that secret he’d never known until Alma told him. He started talking in a low sort of sugary and polite voice, only his anger was there, just as it had always been. Loman knew his friend’s anger and knew it was still there somewhere behind the smile and the sugary voice. Aiden had lost himself to the church, and to Alma, and the only thing Loman understood was that he had lost a friend, just as assuredly as if he’d died.

  As Loman came over the next rise, he heard the biting rasp of Truman’s saw and the kathunk of the splitter’s maul. Someone was working with Truman that morning. Loman hadn’t anticipated that. Just at the edge of the clearing, the splitter set threw down his maul and turned to Truman, yelling something over the buzz of the chainsaw. Instantly, the chainsaw stopped. Truman carried it up the hill a dozen yards or more and set it down in the grass. The splitter was talking and Truman appeared to be ignoring him.

  “I’m thinking what you said,” the splitter said, “I can’t take no credits for another man’s work.”

  Truman continued to gas up the saw, concentrating on how he held the filler can so he wouldn’t spill fuel. He stopped, peered into the tank of the saw, set the can down, screwed the cap back on the saw and turned his attention to the splitter.

  “Suit yourself. The share is with whatever man finishes the job.” He swung the saw out with his left hand, expertly pulling the starter cord with the other. The engine sputtered twice then roared back into action.

  “I ain’t going with it,” the splitter yelled, following close behind Truman as he walked toward the freshly felled tree.

  Truman shrugged and lay to cutting again. The engine screamed as the blade dug deep into the flesh of the still green trunk.

  The splitter stood a few steps away, talking to Truman’s back. “I’m heading out then,” he yelled over the bellowing engine. “What’s the man’s name?”

  Truman turned, clinging to the saw, the engine fast-idling as he thrust his jaw toward the splitter’s face, shouting at him to get to work. The splitter stepped back, started to turn around then changed his mind.

  “I ast his name.”

  Truman’s shoulders went up and he shut off the saw, leaving it wedged in the cut it had made in the trunk. He turned quickly and as he turned he swung with his left arm, not meaning to hit the other man so much as to express his anger and frustration.

  “Then get off!” He yelled, advancing toward the splitter.

  “It ain’t right,” the other said. “A man’s labor is his own, no room for argument there.”

  “Suit yourself,” Truman growled. “Don’t tell me my mind.” He was now standing less than a foot from the other man and Loman wondered why the splitter didn’t strike out since he was a full head taller than Truman and might have taken him easily. Instead, he turned away, picked up his maul and a canvas bag that lay in the grass. He hung the straps of the bag over the head of the maul and slung the two like a tramp’s bundle over his shoulder before proceeding up the trail toward where Loman was standing.

  Loman held his ground, hidden by a stand of trees between himself and the staging area where Truman had gone back to cutting. As the splitter drew closer, he caught sight of Loman and nodded a greeting.

  “You the other man?” the splitter asked. He smiled, showing off two front teeth capped in gold.

  Loman nodded. “My girl’s been sick. I been with her last couple days. She’s at play school now.”

  The man stopped and turned to look back at Truman. “He may be a man of God,” he said. “But he’s got no use for ordinary people. You stay clear of him. That’d be my advice.”

  “What you said back there, about another man’s labors...”

  “A man’s labor is his life.”

  “Truman was offering you a share of the work already done?”

  The splitter nodded. “Like I say, if it’s yours, you got a big problem. I wouldn’t go up against him, I’m telling you that.”

  Loman stared down into the valley. The sound of the chainsaw drowned out all other sounds, echoing up from the clear-cut along the bottom of the draw.

  The other man moved on and Loman sat down on the ground, his back against a big pine whose lower branches shaded him from the morning sun and created a veil between himself and Truman. For over an hour Loman sat watching Truman, apparently oblivious to Loman’s presence. A man of God was a fearsome thing.

  The day the social worker was to arrive, Loman packed Della a lunch, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and the last of the graham crackers. He’d spread a bit of honey on them and put tops on them, like Della always wanted. Della did not like to feel the stickiness of the honey. She always wanted just the right amount of butter and honey so it wouldn’t ooze out on her fingers.

  Somewhere between the time they left for playschool and the time Loman returned to his house, the lady from social services arrived. Her black Ford sedan was parked beside his trailer. The woman, Mrs. Saddlebay, was walking around the trailer writing down notes on some kind of form she had in her clipboard. She was a gaunt, dark-haired woman, dressed in Navy blue slacks and a fancy plaid shirt that Loman had seen in the mail order catalogs Kate used to bring home from the post office and dream over sometimes. It made Loman sad to think of Kate in that moment, sorry she hadn’t been able to have herself some fine things to make her pretty like the woman from social services.

  “I’m Della’s poppa,” he said. “You want to come in? Della has her own room.”

  The social worker introduced herself, calling him Mr. Beeler. Nobody had called him Mr. Beeler since the army.

  “It’s just Loman,” he said. “Everyone calls me Loman.”

  The woman extended her hand and he shook it very gently. She had long skinny fingers that reminded him of a bird’s claws. Her fingers looked fragile and he realized if he’d squeezed her hand the way he squeezed a man’s he would probably break bones. Still, there was something beautiful about her fingers, fancy with white nail polish that looked like the inside of a clamshell.

  He pointed to the steps going up to the door of the trailer. “Like I say, you’re welcome to come in and set, see my daughter’s room. Kate fixed it up for her so she’d have a place all to herself. Pretty and pink.”

  Mrs. Saddlebay put her pencil crossways in her mouth like a horse’s bit, tucked her clipboard under her left arm and cautiously climbed the three stairs to the small porch by the front door. With each step she clung to the flimsy metal railing like a very old woman who feared she might fall.

  At the top of the porch she stopped and Loman realized she was waiting for him to open the door for her. He reached forward, swung it slowly open and for a moment they touched as the two of them maneuvered around on the tiny porch to make room for the door to swing out. Loman ducked his head and stepped inside first, then she followed him. He reached back around her and drew the door shut.

  On the floor of the cramped living room was a thin mattress covered with a soiled brown blanket, with two white pillows resting against the wall like backrests. The woman realized Loman had taken pains to make the place look respectable. There was nothing else in the room but a black pole lamp and a small TV sitting on a green plastic box. In spite of the usual symbols of poverty, the room was impeccably clean. The woman liked that. It suggested that in spite of his coarseness Loman was a man who was at least aware of appearances and their effects on other people.

  Loman gestured toward the only interior door in that room, up toward the front of the trailer. The door stood ajar and as Mrs. Saddlebay a
pproached, Loman pushed gently with his hand and it swung open all the way. Mrs. Saddlebay stepped forward and leaned inside. Every surface, walls, floor and ceiling had been painted a soft pink. Fluffy white curtains hung on either side of a tiny window. A child-sized four poster bed took up most of the floor space. The canopy touched the low ceiling of the room and a freshly washed pink bedspread lay over the mattress without a single wrinkle. Like the living room, this room was spotless. In one corner a Teddy Bear wearing bib overalls, and with a pink ribbon around its neck, sat in a child-sized rocking chair. A small collection of children’s clothing lay neatly folded in a white plastic laundry basket.

  “Kate and me, we done all this when Della was three. We saved up for it, starting with her first birthday.”

  “It’s all very nice,” Mrs. Saddlebay said. She reached into the room, caught the doorknob and pulled it shut, stepped back into the living room and crossed over to the open kitchen area. “Could we sit down and talk for a moment,” she asked, indicating the two chairs pulled up around what appeared to be a hand-made kitchen table.

  “You want coffee or anything?” Loman asked. When the woman politely declined, he sat down opposite her at the table.

  “Mr. Beeler,” she said. “We need to have a serious talk.”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking down at the table nervously, then up again to make eye contact again. He felt something hard and uncomfortable in his throat.

  “I’m sure you love your daughter very much and want the best for her,” she began, now riffling through the pages on her clipboard. “While she was in the hospital the doctors ran some tests.”

  “Yes’m. She’s fine. She’s at play school this morning, like I say.”

  “The doctors would like to see her again very soon.”

  “They said she’s okay. She’s fine.”

  “I suspect she is, Mr. Beeler. But they still would like to see her again, just to make sure, just so we’re all sure she’s healthy and fine.”

  “Like I told you, she’s fine.”

  The woman didn’t say a thing. She held his gaze, her lips slightly parted in a thin smile. He noted she had very white teeth, whiter than he had ever seen before. But she was silent and it made him uncomfortable. Why wasn’t she talking?

  “I want to know what all that means,” Loman said. He pointed at the woman’s clipboard, at last feeling he needed to break the silence. “What have you wrote down about her?”

  “These are routine reports,” she said. “I have to note some rather silly things. Do you have running water, indoor plumbing? Is the house on a sound foundation? Everything looks fine, Mr. Beeler. I’m just concerned that your daughter gets the tests we’re talking about here. It would be best if you signed this so we can get started right away.” She pushed a printed form across the table to him and handed him a pen.

  Loman squinted at the page. There were too many words and some of the type was too small for him to read. If he had the time for it, he could read and figure it all out. “I need time to read this all out,” he said.

  “Do you want me to read it to you?”

  “I can read,” he said defensively. “I just need some time to think it all out.”

  “We need to take her in today,” Mrs. Beeler said. “We can read it together.” From her clipboard she drew a duplicate of the form she’d given Loman and as his eyes moved over the sheet of paper before him, she read it aloud. When she was done, he looked up. The woman thought his eyes looked frightened.

  “Any questions?”

  “I didn’t know she was sick,” Loman said. His head hurt with all of the words she had read. He understood the words and could even read each one by itself on the paper, putting them all together so that they made sense to him was another matter.

  “I’m sure she will be fine but we need your signature, Mr. Beeler.”

  “I’m not so sure about all this.”

  “It’s in her best interest,” the woman said. “If the tests show that she needs treatment and she doesn’t get it…” She paused, waiting for Loman’s response. He gave no indication that he was going to speak or that he had heard what she said.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  He nodded. “She might be real sick, like Kate.”

  “Her mother. How did your wife die,” the woman asked. When he did not answer she said. “I’m sorry to ask. You don’t have to answer.”

  Loman looked down at the paper. For a long moment he studied the lines where he was supposed to sign. The pen lay to one side of the paper. He knew the woman was not going to leave until he signed. “When will she have to go?”

  “Right away. Tonight would be best. I can drive her in.”

  “And what if…what if…”

  “What if you don’t sign? I would have to report it to Child Protective Services. I’m sorry, Mr. Beeler. That’s the way it is. Your daughter’s life is in jeopardy.”

  Loman did not know the word jeopardy but he knew from the tone of the woman’s voice that it was serious. He took up the pen, stared at it as if it were a strange object he’d never seen before. He scrawled his signature hurriedly, threw down the pen as if it were poison, then stood up suddenly, sending his chair clattering to the floor. As the woman gathered up her papers, Loman slammed out the door. By the time she got outside he was nowhere in sight.

  The woman with the long fingers and pearlish white nail polish would take Della. He knew that was going to happen. He had known it for a long time. Kate had warned him that he must work very hard to keep Della with him, that there would be those who would try to take her away. Some people did not believe that men made good parents, she had said. He had always believed what Kate said but he had not able to accept what she said any more than he had been able to accept that Kate’s illness would one day take her away.

  He was following a game trail now, up the hill, his destination a rocky ledge two hundred feet above the village. At the top he sat down cross-legged on the ledge and stared off into the distance. He imagined that somewhere out there beyond the tree line, beyond the mountains, beyond the horizon was a safe spot, maybe just a small clearing or a cave where he could go and sit down and everything would be good. He’d know that it did not matter what happened, it would be okay. He would be okay. Even with Kate gone. Even with Della gone. Even with the memories of Deakon and Abel. Even with Truman and what he had done.

  As he thought about Truman, it occurred to Loman that maybe he had caused the problems Della was now having. He wondered how or why Truman had warned him about the church where Della’s play-school met or what exactly Truman was doing, praying in Della’s hospital room. From where Loman sat, high above the village, he could not see the church that housed Della’s play school but he could see the yard in front of the meeting house of the Holy Gospel Assembly. They did not have a regular church. It was a fixed up mobile home next door to the county motor pool. The plain building had been painted all white. In the front yard they’d planted a tall wooden cross made of ten by twelve beams and at least twenty feet high. Loman had watched the day they constructed and planted the big cross, twelve men with ropes, working like a small army to raise it and settle it into a six foot concrete footing.

  A carefully lettered sign hung from thin rusting chains off the eves of the house, identifying this as the home of the Holy Gospel Assembly. From this distance Loman could not make out the letters on the sign but he knew what it said. “HGA,” people in town called it. The town was divided between the HGA’ers and the Baptists. Deakon and Abel had been a part of something else but it was all the same to Loman, all what they called religion and God. What happened between Deakon and Abel was in another town, long ago, a place Loman and his mother had fled. Later, when he was old enough to understand, his mother told him they had fled. Mama, Loman and his older brother Mace, feared they might be next on Deacon’s list because they’d been Abel’s friend. Mama did not explain what happened or why Abel had to die except that other people in th
e church thought it was God’s will. Death, like life, Abel had taught him, was God’s will.

  Loman could not put the picture of Truman out of his mind, standing at the foot of Della’s bed with his arms raised toward the heavens like the angel of Death. What had he been trying to do? When Della came around and opened her eyes, Truman had tried to take credit for his prayers giving her life. That, too, Abel had taught him; faith and prayer could bring life or could bring death. That was what troubled Loman. Truman was nothing to Della. He should not have taken other people’s business upon himself. Just as Truman should not have tried to make Loman’s salvation his business that day out on the hill, so he should not take on the business of Della’s life or death. It was not Truman’s business. Truman could not pretend he was God. Maybe that was why Abel had had to die.

  When he started down the hill Loman was not aware that he had a destination in mind, nor was he thinking about what he was about to do. He stopped by the trailer. The woman with the white fingernails was gone. So was Della’s Teddy bear, so he knew for certain that the woman had done what she’d come to do.

  Loman unlocked the back closet and took out his Stevens, tumbling a half-dozen red-jacketed shells into his pocket. He cracked the breech of the shotgun and inserted two shells into the double barrels, clicked the gun closed and set the safety.

  Truman’s tiny house was less than a mile down the road, set back a hundred yards from the pock-marked blacktop and shielded from traffic by overrun blackberries and scrub oak. The driveway, just two dusty ruts worn into the dirt, went past the house and turned to the right into the back yard. At the side of the house a black dog as big as a young bear, barked a greeting and trotted up to meet Loman. “Hey, Menko. Hey, boy.” Loman paused to pat the dog’s head and pull his ear.