“I’m real sorry to hear it,” Clairey replied again.
“It won’t be much longer. Not much. There’s to be a baby comin’ in the winter, and Fergus done promised that afore the baby comes we’d be in our own place—him and me and the baby. ’Cause I done tole him we need our own place to raise a baby.”
“Well, that’s real nice now. Real nice that you gonna have yourself a baby,” Clairey said with a sincere smile.
“I wanna girl. I tole Fergus I just knowed it’s a girl. I done seen the signs.”
Clairey grew fascinated, far more than she would have liked to have admitted, because it wasn’t proper to discuss such things so casually. Her curiosity got the better of her, and she asked eagerly, “How can you tell it?”
“Oh, lotsa ways,” Elvira told her with a little shrug of her shoulder.
Clairey’s interest piqued. She didn’t like herself for it, but she was hanging on the other girl’s every word at that point, her curiosity having gotten the better of her. No one had ever told her about such things, and Clairey was eager to know more.
“I don’t want no part of the heel of the bread. Now I done gave up on eatin’ it afore I even knowed I was with child. And then I done put a wooden spoon and a pair of scissors under the bed I sleep in soon as I found out so’s to make certain it’d be a girl. And then I put some thread through a needle, and I hold it like this over my hand.” She turned her palm up and held an imaginary needle and thread suspended over it. “And it starts a turnin’ and a turnin’ in a circle. Now, if it was to be a boy, it woulda gone back and forth and not in a circle like it done.”
“That so?” Clairey said, leaning forward, her attention held.
Elvira settled back in the chair, puffed up with self-importance. “It is.” She waited to be compelled to tell more.
Clairey hated to feel ignorant. She knew Elvira was much younger than she, and yet Elvira was the more informed of the two of them. “Do you reckon it works that a-way every time?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she insisted in a definitive tone. “It worked for my mama. She tole me so. And there’s others, too, that says it. It’s to be a girl. And I’m gonna call her Bathsheba from the Bible.”
Clairey looked confused. “But Bathsheba weren’t no good from the Bible. She done bewitched that good ole King David, and she done beguiled him to do some mighty bad things on account of her.” She could see right away that her words hadn’t set well.
Elvira puckered up her berry-red lips into a pout and grew defensive at Clairey’s statement. “I don’t care none what she do. And’ ain’t it more David’s doin’ than hers anyhow? ’Sides, I done set on that name, and I aim to have it. It’s a purty name, ain’t it? Purtiest one I ever done heard.”
Worried about offending Elvira any further, Clairey nodded her head enthusiastically, trying to set a convincing expression on her face. She figured it was not worth getting into a debate over. So Bathsheba had been a bad woman. So she’d been the cause of David’s downfall; it was none of her business if Elvira wanted to name some sweet innocent babe after the woman. So she lied. “’Course it is. Real purty. I think it a fine name.”
Elvira relaxed again, the pucker on her lips fading away. It seemed to Clairey that Elvira was not one for a two-way conversation. She liked to hear herself speak, and she liked her company to listen. That was the extent of her communication skills.
“Fergus’s mama says if it’s to be a boy, we ortta call him after Fergus. I done tole her we was ’cause I knowed it ain’t no boy. I knowed it’s to be a girl. So it don’t matter none to me if she wants to call it after Fergus.”
“A girl’d be awful nice. I’m right glad for you.”
“You and Ellis’ll prob’ly start yourselves a family direc’ly now, won’t you?”
Clairey understood what Elvira was doing. She was fishing. She was hoping for some stirring revelation that she could share in her other circles. Ellis and his new bride were probably a hot topic of conversation. There was probably all sorts of speculation revolving around the hasty state in which she and Ellis had married. Likewise, they likely wondered over when their relationship had begun, how they had chanced to meet, why he would take up with the Davenports in the first place.
She could imagine the lot of them saying it was a shotgun wedding. They probably thought she was in a family way. Why else would Ellis marry her but out of duty? Only she knew that half of it was right, that it had been duty that had made him a husband. When there was no talk of a baby and not evidence of one, either, that must have thrown them for a loop.
Clairey suspected Elvira was dying to bring to light what had really transpired, one and all hanging on her every word as she divulged the titillating details to them, and they, in shocked horror, mouths open and eyes wide, would say how they just couldn’t believe it, how it was just too wild to be true.
Clairey shrugged. “Don’t rightly know.” She was hoping that would suffice. It did not.
“You ain’t got problems, have you?” Elvira blurted, and it was almost as if she meant to hurt Clairey with her seemingly innocent demeanor as she continued her interrogation. Perhaps it made her feel superior to be the one that could carry a child and Clairey without her own. She was, after all, no more than a child herself, and perhaps living with her mother-in-law had made its mark upon her.
“Problems? I don’t reckon so.” Clairey felt stung by the question and fought to keep a lump from forming in her throat. It was far too personal a matter to her, and she mentally summarized the girl as silly and mean-spirited, trifling with people’s emotions like that.
Elvira wasn’t about to give up, however. Whether she couldn’t read the reluctance of Clairey’s wish not to discuss it or she just didn’t care wasn’t clear, but she went on. “What d’you mean? You don’t know? Maybe you ain’t tryin’ for one yet? That it?”
“No. Well, I mean to say…how’d I know I got problems or not?”
“You tryin’ and you ain’t got no baby is how you knowed. Means you’re barren.”
Clairey’s face fell, and she grew misty-eyed, but more than anything, she was just shocked.
Elvira seemed to change her tactics when she saw that she had caused Clairey distress. “I knowed a girl that was barren. Why, her husband done put her away. He done found hisself some other gal that could bear him youngins and put her away,” she said. “But I’d not worry none yet, if I’s you. You ain’t been murried long. There’s still time in it. Lotsa time.”
“Yes, lotsa time,” Clairey agreed absently.
“Maybe it ain’t you no how. Maybe Ellis don’t know his way round. How is he with you?” she asked slyly, her head tilted and her eyes watching Clairey with intense awareness.
They heard the men’s voices in the hallway, and Elvira quickly changed the subject, her whole demeanor changing instantly and completely. “Now don’t worry none ’bout that farm, not one little bit. Fergus’ll see to it.”
“I’m indebted to you. If you ever need a favor returned, why, you just let me know.”
Fergus appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his thumbs hooked in his belt loops, the doctor at his elbow. “What you girls been up to?”
Elvira popped out of her seat, approaching Fergus with her most charming and alluring smile. “Nothin’, Fergus. Just talkin’ is all. Wasn’t we, Miss Clairey?”
“Yes,” Clairey agreed. She, too, tried to smile, but it ended up being a weak attempt.
“Well, come on, gal. We got to get on up to Ellis’s place afore it gets too dark,” he said, sliding his arm around her neck.
Doctor Fielding showed them to the door and came back to the parlor. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “Think I’ll turn in for the evening.”
“Yessir.”
“But you make yourself at home, and if you need anything, give a holler.” He drifted up the stairway and was gone.
Clairey went to the bedroom where she and Ellis were to stay and prepare
d herself for bed, wearing a white nightgown that brushed the tops of her toes from the trunk that had once belonged to Millie Fielding. She climbed under the covers and did something that she normally never would have done, but she knew that Ellis wouldn’t know the difference. He was out. And if he did happen to wake, he wouldn’t remember her wanton behavior anyhow. She wrapped herself around Ellis’s body, pressing close to his side with her hand resting flat on his chest. His heart thumped loud and strong, and the pressure of him against her was solid and reassuring. He was still alive, thanks to the doctor and his wife. She felt gratitude wash over her for the doctor’s ability to mend what was broken and for Mrs. Fielding’s capacity to cultivate. Through the two of them, the Lord had provided.
“I’m awful glad you ain’t dead,” she revealed just under her breath. “I’m fond of you, you know. More than I wanna own up to.” She lay there in the dark, taking pleasure in the closeness of him. “Nobody ever called me Mrs. Hooper afore,” she said, unable to keep a smile from her lips. It left a warm sensation in her body. It brought her pleasure, made her feel as if she mattered. She was somebody. She was Ellis’s wife. She was Mrs. Hooper. She belonged.
As she nestled in tight next to Ellis, Clairey was glad the day was over. It seemed to be a day without end. While she was troubled over Ellis’s misfortune, it was something else entirely that filled her thoughts as she lay there next to him.
That day, Clairey had learned more about being a woman than she had in her entire life. Mrs. Fielding had taught her how to dress, how to do her hair, how to keep herself clean. But it meant far more to her than just acquiring a new dress. It was the first time Clairey had ever felt pretty. What a lady Mrs. Fielding was. How generous and good. Oh, if only she could tell Gilda Fielding how much those things meant to her. She felt a great desire to be like the doctor’s wife, to nurture the best in others, to be strong and confident and true to who she was.
Clairey had never been mothered before. She had never been taught that she could be something better than what she was. Perhaps her own mother would have bestowed those gifts of wisdom upon her if she’d had them to give. But her mother was merely surviving, only trying to endure.
As fondly as she now recalled Mrs. Fielding, she also remembered Elvira and their meeting. Clairey knew enough of human nature to know that Elvira was not someone she could trust. She’d spotted it right away—her mean nature, the manipulative undertones of her every word and gesture. Hadn’t Clairey known enough of her father to instinctively recognize those qualities in others? Yes, Elvira was a cat, a prowling, devious cat, whose inborn nature it was to toy with people’s emotions as a cat would toy with a mouse.
Was Elvira really going to have a girl? Clairey might not have been fond of Elvira but envied her nonetheless. What would it be like to carry a child, to have a life developing inside of her? How would it feel to have Ellis’s baby move within her womb? And what could she hope to give to a child, a daughter? One thing was certain: her daughter would never have to be as empty as she. Clairey would see to that. She would take the things she was discovering for herself, and she would impart that wisdom upon her own girl.
She pondered all that she had discovered that day, things that she had learned, things that she wanted to commit to memory. She had been educated in both the good and bad of being a woman from Gilda and from Elvira, little kernels of knowledge that she would tuck away for later use. Another person, a newer person, a wiser person, lay within the skin of old Clairey. She began to doze, and eventually the steady tempo of Ellis’s heartbeat lulled her to sleep.
The next few days passed by slowly, agonizingly for Clairey. She watched Ellis suffer in the worst way. He was feverish and sweaty, out of his mind much of the time. She was diligent in sitting by his side, cleaning his leg twice a day and re-bandaging it with fresh linens. She shuddered at the task, the wounds oozing and resembling raw meat that had been stitched together at the seams.
Doctor Fielding kept him on morphine for the first few days to manage the pain, but he dared not continue that treatment for a prolonged amount of time. He explained to Clairey that he didn’t want her husband to develop a taste for it.
Gradually, Ellis grew well enough to sit up on his own, to get out of bed with a great deal of discomfort, and take care of his own basic needs. He talked incessantly of getting back to the farm, fretting over the state it would be in once he returned to it. Clairey could see that he wouldn’t rest well until he was back in his own place, surrounded by the hills, trees, and long grass that were familiar to him. She began to understand that he couldn’t heal at the doctor’s home. He needed to be at his own home.
Chapter 21
CLAIREY SAW TO IT that Ellis was comfortable in bed before she went out to the barn to hunt out the ax. She found it hanging on the wall and took it down then headed with a single determination for the pig pen, stepping through the gate, holding the handle of the ax with both hands, ready to swing. “Here, piggy,” she hollered. “Here, pig!”
Snaggletooth came tearing at her, making his customary racket, snorting and squealing. “That’s right, you son of a gun, come to mama! I got somethin’ for you,” she said, standing her ground.
Clairey braced herself with her feet apart in a semi-squatting position, pulled the ax back, and took a mighty swing with all of her weight in it; holding it so that the blunt side and not the blade was coming down, she bashed the boar on the skull with a loud thwack. The hog’s head flew backward, his whole body momentarily leaving the ground until he fell prostrate on his side, motionless. Working a rope around his hind legs, she tied it tight, tugging a few times to make sure it would stay. The hog stirred, ready to attack had it not been bound by rope. She was squatting next to it and was startled by its resurrection, falling back on her bottom, scuttling backward and groping for the ax as it squealed and raged, bent on making some noise and chasing her down with all of its wild wrath. Her hand probed frantically in the grass until it made contact with the ax, and she grabbed hold of the handle with urgency, hitting the animal on the head again just as it was upon her.
She stood over it for a moment, the ax still in her hand, her heart beating wildly, and then she took the loose end of the rope she had secured about its hind legs and tossed it over the tall wooden frame in the yard, pulling with all her weight until the hog was suspended upside down. Then she secured the end of the rope to a stake pounded into the grass. The pig never knew what hit him. She went back into the house, took a knife from the drawer of the cupboard, and then she went back through the door, returning to the pig pen.
Snaggletooth hung limp, swinging slightly in the breeze at the end of the rope. It took some effort to slash through the layers of fat, fat she would cut into chunks and use later to make soap, but she did the work in one quick swipe, the blood spraying out in a fine mist. Clairey cleaned out the innards, leaving them in a messy pile on the ground, and then began scraping the hair from the boar’s skin, shaving it clean. She left him there to bleed out for the better part of the day so that the meat wouldn’t spoil, before she cut him down and carved him up, putting most of the meat into the smokehouse to cure, leaving the rest to soak in a salt mix in a box on the porch.
Not a bad show for one day’s work, she thought as evening set in. That devil pig wouldn’t hurt anyone anymore. Vengeance made tasty meat.
Trapper sniffed at the locked box that sat on the porch.
“That ain’t for you,” she scolded the dog. “Now off with you.”
The old dog regarded her with his deep brown eyes and then took off at a trot down the porch steps to find something else to eat.
Clairey went to the back porch, stripping down to her underwear, and gave herself a good cleaning in the barrel of rain water that sat under the eaves, lathering up her arms and face and hands with a chiseled chunk of lye soap. She washed the blood and grime from her body with satisfaction, happy with the outcome of end of Snaggletooth.
That night, as Clairey c
leaned Ellis’s leg, he noted for the first time that she was wearing a white nightgown, and he hadn’t remembered seeing her in it before. He wondered where it had come from. “That a new nightdress you got there?”
She was concentrating intently on her task. “Why, Mrs. Fielding done give it to me.”
He watched her move about the room, taking things out, putting things away. His eyes admired her as her hips gracefully swayed. Not having those over-sized boots on made quite a difference in the way she carried herself. She looked like she was floating in the cotton nightgown. He wondered how he hadn’t noticed the change until then.
“It’s awful nice.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But them there underwears was a sight warmer.”
He chuckled at her admission.
She stopped what she was doing to look at him. “Well, they was,” she told him defensively.
“Sure they was,” he agreed, stifling his mirth. He didn’t want her to think he was poking fun at her. “But you look real fine in it anyhow.”
She seemed embarrassed by his remark, growing self-conscious. She went to great lengths to arrange the blankets on the bed, fluffing his pillow before tucking it under his head and keeping her hands busy while trying to avoid his gaze. Clairey climbed into bed next to him, twisting her body to extinguish the kerosene lamp on the table next to the bed.
“Night,” he said softly in the darkness.
“Night,” she responded. She lay on her back briefly, before she rolled onto her side and went to sleep.
The next morning, Ellis was served fresh bacon for breakfast while Clairey changed his bandaging again. Every morning and every night it was to become their ritual. Slathering a thick coat of salve that the doctor had given her and directed her to use generously on his leg, she took the opportunity to inspect the damage. It looked downright horrible, but the doctor had told her that for the next several days, she wouldn’t see much of a visual improvement.
Good Ground Page 18