by Lisa Samson
I don’t care how many people you’ve killed, but if you want to tell me the number that would be fine. Maybe someone should know that besides you. It seems like something you should get off your chest before you die.
And regarding our “thing,” well, you shouldn’t feel at all guilty about anything as far as my feelings are concerned. First of all, the fact that we didn’t see each other after the Fishtank, well, there are thirty thousand students on campus. That speaks for itself. Second, I really enjoyed our week together after graduation before you went off. I don’t have any regrets in getting to know you better and there was nothing to be ashamed of, which is a miracle in and of itself. I think you’re right, maybe if Janey hadn’t gotten pregnant, we might have had a little something nice between us. Maybe it would have gone further and matured into something deeper. Who can know these things? Don’t forget, either way I would have gone to Rwanda. I’d probably have been in no shape for a romance anyway.
The pictures came today, so I’m dropping them in with the letter as you’ve probably already noticed. I had to include one of the crazies because they defy explanation. Sweetie sleeps curled around the top of my head now. I honestly don’t know how I can still sleep with her like that, but I do.
Thanksgiving being Thursday, I’m going to bake tomorrow. Claudius’s mother left behind a wonderful recipe for pumpkin pie. Do you get to receive care packages? Because I could send you something sometime.
Sincerely,
May
Any other year the aroma from the roasting turkey would have been wending its way around the bungalow by nine in the morning. May always started it too soon. She didn’t know what she was thinking, telling Father John about that soup. Who did she think was going to bring her a turkey this year? She hadn’t got groceries in since Sister Ruth left for Florida. And she wasn’t sure how she was going to get any because she’d tried that old Galaxy again and it was deader than poor Eloise the cow. But Sister Ruth would be back in two weeks, and May would survive until then. Fresh eggs, milk, and vegetables she’d canned the previous summer were hardly staples to complain about.
No way would she ask Glen to start caring for her. He already found her pathetic enough. And she couldn’t imagine what she could offer him in return for doing the shopping. Fresh eggs? That would hardly be worth his time.
She made a pot of coffee, refusing to get out of her pajamas until ten. You can’t pretend things are fine on a Thanksgiving morning with no turkey. That’s just ridiculous. The woodstove warmed the room at a nice roar and she kept the door open to mimic a fireplace.
As she poured the first cup the phone rang.
“Happy Thanksgiving, honey!”
“Sister Ruth! Same to you. How’s Florida?”
“Couldn’t be one bit better. We’re having a reunion time, living in our second childhood. I’m not even worried about you, that’s how good a time I’m having.”
“I’m fine. The dogs are fine. The animals are fine. Even the minister you sent over is fine.”
“Well, that’s a relief !”
“So only a few more days!” May said.
“That’s one of the things I’m calling about. I’m extending my stay until mid-March.”
“Really?” May set down her cup. “That’s great! You must be having an even better time than you’re letting on.”
“I love it here, May. The warmth is so good for me. I forgot how much I hate the winter there. It’s depressing.”
—Yeah.
“Well, good for you, Sister Ruth.”
“You’re going to have to get along without me.”
“I’ll manage.” If she could only arrange for some groceries.
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“That’s better. How about, ‘I’ll take this opportunity and get on my own two feet before June’?”
“Okay.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
May didn’t doubt that.
“Well, honey, Happy Thanksgiving and I’ll check in every so often.”
“You have a good time.”
“Can’t help myself.”
Wow. Well, she’d lived through three months alone in a burned-out village. A winter in Kentucky? Child’s play.
But after bundling in her jacket and taking care of the animals, her mind settled to the truth of what was going to be a long winter. She hoped Eli would write back soon.
Sunday afternoon around one, Father John and his family pulled into her driveway. She pretended she wasn’t home even though she knew he knew she had no place else to be. She peered down from her bedroom window. There was no soup! No soup!
What a sweet family.
His wife’s hair soaked up the sun in a shining auburn ponytail, and she held a Tupperware container in her hands. She was slender, dressed in a simple skirt and sweater set, pearls and pumps, and her face registered sadness when Father John shook his head. She handed him the container. As she ushered the two kids, a preteen boy and a girl not much younger, down the walk and loaded them back into the little white compact, Father John set the container on the porch.
He turned the car around and pulled slowly down the drive.
May felt like the lone pioneer who sits on his claim as the rest of the wagon train rolls away. She remembered the UN Jeep as it pulled out of the village, leaving her behind. And where there was the cry of the villagers, now only silence remained.
• 14 •
It was the coldest January she could ever remember. The snow had blanketed the ground for about a week, and nights were dropping into the single digits. She had to feed the stove several times a night to keep the cold at bay. Poor Sweetie and Stinky looked positively blue with their fuzzy skin constricted by the chill. She let them sleep inside the sleeping bag with her, and with Stinky, well, it wasn’t the most pleasant experience. She just couldn’t bear to think of those naked creatures shivering all night, even if they wore both their sweaters.
She slipped out after the sun rose to feed the animals. She’d hung a warming lamp in the chicken coop for the ladies, set a heated base under their waterer, and hoped the barn with the doors shut nice and tight was warm enough for Louise and Flower. May felt so sorry for them, her heart wanted to bring them into the kitchen for the night.
The days passed in a blur, collecting upon themselves in a chilly mass, each day the same, each day leading her down into the melancholy she’d never allowed before. The promise of spring, of planting and growing and picking and arranging and selling, had brought hope the many years before. But this winter? What would spring bring?
Sister Ruth called every so often and asked about her plans. But she had none. It was like asking someone who didn’t know how to write how her poem was coming along.
She gathered the mail when Glen came, their normal banter cut short by the chill. She stood at the kitchen door and eyed her gardens that would be no more. She shooed Father John away in a blurt of anger in early December, telling him she wasn’t ready for his prodding. That one good cry didn’t mean they were best friends. And every Wednesday when he knocked and she refused to answer, she picked up the zippered baggie of cookies or brownies or potpie or chili he left on the rocking chair out front. On Tuesday night, she put the container on her stoop.
May stayed in her sleeping bag as much as she could, thankful Glen was still chopping wood and leaving some for her. She read or listened to the radio. She hadn’t taken pictures since Christmas.
So this was what it felt like to give up.
And the coffee and tea were gone.
Day into night. Night into day.
February arrived. She could tell she’d lost weight by the way her pajamas hung on her. Glen offered to run to the store, but she wouldn’t take him up on it. It was humiliating enough having Sister Ruth do all that. So she put on her smiley face and acted like everything was fine. All that was left to eat was rice and eggs and the weekly offeri
ng from Father John’s wife. She heated up Louise’s milk to drink something warm. It wasn’t as cold now, but it was still freezing in her bedroom, and she was conserving on heat. She hadn’t taken a shower in a month. She didn’t want to be naked and cold in that bathroom. She didn’t want to wait for the water to heat up. The kitchen sink would do just fine. Sweetie and Stinky sure didn’t care. And the chickens never had.
Eli wrote faithfully, twice a week, telling her about the history lessons he finally decided to take, as if writing it to her would cement the information in his brain. And he told her about God and stuff, which was probably why she felt unable to respond as she should. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to hear it. She just didn’t know what to say. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to say anything. Her return letters consisted merely of little quips and quotes.
She hurried through the chores and jumped back inside the sleeping bag. When she felt like it, she read. Maybe she was a bear in hibernation. That seemed like a much better explanation.
She waited for that one balmy weekend in February to arrive where the crocuses threatened to bloom. But now it was the twenty-fifth of the month, and she safely surmised that weekend never would come. They were all alive, though. They were surviving. It’s all she really knew how to do. By the last week of February, she was down to just eggs and milk. Everything else was gone.
She brought Father Isaac’s red martyr’s stole downstairs on February twenty-eighth and wrapped the narrow crimson fabric around her neck. It just didn’t seem right to leave it deserted up there in the nightstand any longer. Outside in the dark, sleet clicked against the glass of the windows, on the tin roofs of the farm structures, and softly against the wood siding.
Snow at least lulled a person into believing all was well, because of the gentle beauty. But this seemed dangerous and slippery. Dark and cold. She added more wood to the fire, wrapped the stole more tightly around her neck, and slid into the sleeping bag. Only seven thirty, but time really was relative during the winter.
Sister Ruth would be home in two weeks.
She woke up! Sucking in her breath, she opened her eyes. The fire.
The fire.
Father Isaac! Patrice! Yvette! Where are you?
She gasped in a breath. As her eyes focused she reached for the stole. The woodstove. The woodstove was the fire.
No cross, no bodies. A woodstove. Just an old woodstove.
Her skin prickled as if a shower of rubble ran down between her skin and her muscles. She couldn’t breathe.
Oh God.
Oh God.
—I need Claudius.
She unzipped the sleeping bag and threw it back, the heat that had collected around her like a cloud dissipating into the red darkness.
She shoved on her boots and her coat, pushed open the door, and ran for the fields.
Into the woods. Limbs tore at her hair and clothing.
And up the hill to the clearing, where the spirit of her friend really lived. He’s not in the graveyard. No. Not there. And he never has been. He’s here. Oh yes, oh no, he’s here.
Atop the ridge she folded in half, landing on the stiff winter grass as the cold wind shifted its way through the trees and across the grass, and the sleet continued to fall.
Smashing the grass with her hand, the sideways view of black mountains blurred with the water from her eyes coming more from the cold than anything else. Her cheek felt the ground.
Her heart began to slow back to normal.
“I’m so tired of eggs,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
Claudius whispered back, “I don’t rightly blame you, May-May. I’d be sick of them too.”
And he didn’t tell her to walk to Beattyville and get some groceries or ask Glen to pick some up for her.
She woke a second time. She couldn’t move.
Freezing rain covered her, soaking through her clothing. She opened her eyes, the whisper of light over the mountains in the distance, the great domes gray in the pale shimmer of new morning.
Memory gushed from her brain to her limbs. She sought to move her legs. So slow. Rolling onto her belly, she groaned. Lordymercy. Onto her hands and knees. Oh, her knees! So tight and throbbing. She rocked, hoping for momentum. How had she stayed asleep?
She took a few deep breaths.
—Get up, May! Come on!
She sat back on her heels, then slammed a foot onto the ground, leg bent at the knee. Her hands clutched at tufts of grass as she tried to straighten, her behind high in the air, every muscle screaming at the sudden movement. And her scars ached. Oh, Lord. Her knees hadn’t felt like that in years.
May stumbled home.
The woodstove glowed with coals. She threw in a few logs as Stinky and Sweetie scampered about her feet. Letting them out for just a few minutes to do their business, she made a quick cup of hot milk. What she wouldn’t do for a cup of tea right then.
She couldn’t stop shaking, shivering as she stood at the door watching the dogs until the milk simmered. While it cooled a bit, she filled their bowls extra full, changed their water, then hurried upstairs to change her clothing.
Oh! The chill of her bedroom hit her full force, and May could barely peel off her wet clothing. Getting into a fresh pair of flannel pajamas was even more difficult. Cold clammy skin and fabric? Not exactly a smooth combination. Three pairs of socks next, the second and third pair easier to negotiate.
Soon the dogs were scratching at the door, looking almost blue with cold and wet.
May let them in and dried them off with a tea towel.
She sipped her milk and climbed back into the sleeping bag, shivering and shivering and shivering. The woodstove could never be hot enough even if it was glowing white.
May had a cough. Big surprise. But it was the second of March, and the warm should be arriving soon, right? The freezing rain changed to snow and it lasted all night and into the gray of the morning. She awakened feeling a little feverish and achy. But she’d be feeling better tomorrow most certainly. She slogged through the chores, the snow slipping into her shoes and wetting down her socks and, good grief. Really? What part of her brain stopped functioning when she chose not to wear boots, but instead slid her feet into an old pair of muck shoes?
May filled Louise’s manger with hay and repeated the process for Flower. She opened the door to let them wander out into the barnyard if they so chose.
Next the chickens, all huddled together in a feathery circle beneath the light in the coop. She poured food onto the feeder and filled the waterer with the hose she’d dragged over. They gathered around her, the friendly lot, little chip-chips coming from their throats. Claudius had taught her to pick the chickens up when they were little chicks and talk to them.
“Hey, ladies,” she cooed. “How are you girls doing this morning?”
Parma-Jean the Fifth squatted down to let May pet the feathers on her head.
March 2, 2004
Dear Eli,
I’m not much of a writer during the cold months, I’m afraid. Life slows down tremendously here, and I thought I’d take more pictures, but right now I only leave the kitchen when I have to. I took your advice and always keep plenty of wood out on the stoop. I’ve added that to my daily chores. All the animals are fine, but I don’t know why or how. It’s comforting though. We do all we can to escape nature, and they live in it just fine. I wonder why God made us like he did, having to survive by our wits since he didn’t seem to equip our bodies to simply just be. Unless you live in Hawaii or something. Do you ever think about how much different life would be if we had fur?
I’m glad to hear you met with Father John. I ran him off a month or two ago. I just can’t face things at the moment. I don’t know why I’m even writing this to you, but I figure you’re the safest person I know right now, which is pretty ironic considering why you are where you are. The ironies of life never cease to amaze me. I feel like I’m living the most ironic existence in the world. Hiding from the world amid so much
life. Weird.
The days at UK seem really far away, almost like a dream. I’ve never really known who I am, at least not in any sense of fullness. And I didn’t there either. But that’s only become worse with age, so much so that those days feel almost as if they never happened. Except for you. And you’ve changed as much as I have. It’s odd.
I got caught out in the freezing rain and have quite the cough now. So I just do the chores as quickly as I can and get back in my sleeping bag. I don’t even feel like reading. I don’t know why I’m even writing this, to be honest. I guess I feel sad you’re there all alone with nobody to really communicate with. That must be terrible. Most likely, my defenses are down because I’m not feeling good. I’ve been thinking about what you said, how different life might have been had Janey not become pregnant. Maybe I would have come home from Rwanda before the killings. Maybe we’d be living in a house in Lexington, or an apartment in some big city somewhere, you teaching school (perhaps you’d have an advanced degree by now) and me, most likely, doing a more serious form of journalism. I think even a couple of months in Rwanda would have removed aspirations of Vogue from my desires. I must be a little hazy to be writing all that. Sorry.
Hopefully the warm weather will come sooner this year. I haven’t checked the almanac. Claudius always did that sort of thing, but I’m lousy at anything that smacks of being official. He was a farmer. A real farmer. I just grow flowers. There’s a big difference, don’t you think?
Okay, that’s all for now. I’ll get this out front before Glen gets here with the mail.
Sincerely and with frostbite,
May
—Oh, boy.
The color of her phlegm had deepened, and the chills coursing through her were only rivaled by the raging heat that erupted two minutes later. Hot and cold, hot and cold. May just wanted to sleep. She couldn’t eat. The thought of an egg made her more nauseated than she already felt. There was a thermometer somewhere around, but she hadn’t needed one before and even if she did have the strength to go rooting around, she couldn’t remember where it was.