Crossing Tinker's Knob

by Cooper, Inglath

  “Matt,” she said a few moments later, pulling back to look up at him. “I don’t know where this can go. If there’s anywhere for it to go, but I love you, too.”

  “There’s everywhere for it to go,” he said. “There’s the whole world.” He kissed her then, pressing her back against the grass beneath them and stretching alongside her, half his body covering hers.

  Matt had been with his share of girls, but none of it had ever meant what he now realized it should have. Before now, it had always been about the end game. Guys in a locker room bragging about whose pants they’d gotten into over the weekend.

  He laced his hand through Becca’s long, soft hair, aware, too, for the first time in his life of what a different thing it was to care more about pleasing than being pleased. As far as sex was concerned, for him it turned the whole thing inside out, so that every smooth move he’d cultivated with other girls felt exactly like what it had been. A meaningless act with nothing remotely selfless at its core. And none of it, none of it, applied to what he felt for Becca.

  “Matt.” Becca put a hand to his face, looked into his eyes.

  He pulled back, shifting his weight. “Am I hurting you? Do you want me to stop?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head and cupping the side of his face with one hand. “No. Don’t worry so much, okay? I just want you. The real you.”

  All his uncertainty fell away then, and he turned onto his back, pulling her along with him so that she sat up, her legs straddling either side of him. He anchored a hand on the back of her thigh, and she leaned down to kiss him with all the sweet innocence he was so drawn to in her.

  Eventually, she stretched out on top of him, his hands sliding to her waist and up to her shoulder blades, sealing her to him with an undeniable knowledge that she was what he wanted for the rest of his life.

  A boat roared down the channel, bringing the world back to them, its engine wound out, loud voices making themselves heard above the sound. Matt sat up, recognizing the group as Wilks and some of the other players from the team. There were a few girls with them, Angie’s dark hair visible at the front where she stood next to Wilks.

  Becca sat up. “They’re looking for you.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  They listened as the boat disappeared around the bend and into the cove. They heard the boat slow at Matt’s dock, idling for a minute or more while voices called Matt’s name. When they got no answer, the boat revved up again and came flying back out of the cove, then jerking to a near stop as Wilks glanced over and spotted Matt and Becca in the inlet.

  “Hey, there they are!” he called out, whipping the steering wheel toward them and then dropping the engine back and beaching the boat on the sand next to the canoe.

  They were all drunk. That much was obvious from twenty feet away in their unsteady balancing act with the boat. Joey Mathers and Dale Brooks stood in the back, beers in their hands. Angie looked uncomfortable, and for a moment, Matt was sorry about it. It hadn’t been his intention to hurt her.

  “Hey, man,” Wilks said, catapulting off the boat and splashing his way to the shore. “You didn’t invite us to the picnic.”

  Matt reached for Becca’s hand and pulled her close to him. “This one was private.”

  “I can see that,” Wilks said, looking at Becca in a way that made heat rise in Matt’s chest. “I don’t blame you for making this one a solo gig.” He glanced over his shoulder. “‘Course Angie’s wondering why she didn’t get an invitation. Maybe that would have been awkward though since she’s supposed to be your girlfriend and all.”

  “Shut up, Wilks,” Matt said, steel in his voice.

  “Matt, let’s go,” Becca said, taking his arm.

  “Wilks, stop,” Angie called out from the boat.

  He turned and threw an arm her way. “What? You’re okay with getting dumped like yesterday’s trash? Isn’t that what he’s done with all of us? Got himself a new girlfriend, and now we’re not on the call list anymore.”

  “Wilks, get on the damn boat,” Dale said.

  “You guys are a bunch of wimps. You’re willing to cut him behind his back, but in front of him, it’s ‘no problem, Matt. We’ll be here when you’re done with your farm girl.”

  Matt let go of Becca’s hand then and bolted through the water to where Wilks stood. He shoved him once with everything he had. Wilks tumbled backwards, splashing heavily into the shallow water, then leaping back up with Virginia red clay painting the legs of his white swimming trunks.

  “You two used to be like brothers,” Joey said, hanging over the edge of the boat. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  Anger edged out any remorse Matt might have felt. He’d made so many excuses for Wilks, and the truth was he refused to do it anymore.

  “Matt, stop, please,” Becca said from behind him.

  Wilks stumbled to his feet, running a hand across his face and hair to clear the water. “You’ve gone over the edge, you know it?”

  “You don’t know when to quit, man,” Matt said. “Get out of here.”

  Wilks climbed over the side of the boat, throwing a last glance at Becca and then Matt. He put an arm around Angie and pulled her against him. She looked once at Matt and then glanced away.

  “You don’t mind then, if I pick up where you left off?” Wilks yelled out. He slammed the gearshift into reverse and wheeled the boat around, flooring it out of the cove.

  Matt stayed in the same spot until the sound of the engine disappeared altogether. He turned then and found Becca standing on the grass, her arms folded across her chest, the joy he’d seen in her face moments ago completely gone now.

  “We should go, Matt,” she said.

  “Becca—”

  “Who are we kidding?” Her voice was soft and reasoning. He would have preferred her anger, anything over the quiet acceptance with which she posed the question.

  “I don’t care what they think,” he said.

  “Maybe not now. But you will.”

  Matt ran a hand through his hair, frustration in his voice when he said, “If they can’t accept you, Becca, then they’re not my friends.”

  She shook her head. “You’ve known them for a long time. I don’t want to change your life, Matt.”

  He walked toward her, not stopping until he stood directly in front of her. He tipped her chin up with a single finger and kissed her mouth. “You already have,” he said. “You’ve changed everything.”

  37

  Drowning

  “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

  ― William Shakespeare

  Now

  After leaving the lake house, Becca nearly made it to the end of the driveway before she had to pull over, leaning forward with her arms wrapped around the steering wheel, grief rising up from deep inside her.

  Here, alone, with no one to hear her, she gave in to it, the force flattening her the way a summer thunderstorm flattens an otherwise perfectly stout field of corn.

  Granny Miller had once told her that pain was like that, quiet inside a person until roused, a sleeping monster intent on devouring everything in its path. She hated now the sound of her own weeping, hated herself for giving in to it, for her inability to stop it.

  She’d never known that Matt had come to see her. All those years, and her mother had never told her. Both sadness and anger tore at her, while above, thunder clapped and lightning streaked across the darkening sky. Raindrops splattered the windshield, only a few at first, and then increasing in number until they hit the truck in unrelenting, unforgiving sheets. Becca opened the door and got out, standing in the middle of the gravel road.

  She cried until she was spent, the sound drowned beneath the downpour, the sorrow folding in upon itself as the storm above steadied to a gentle rain and then subsided altogether. She leaned against the truck, her dress plastered to her skin, while the old sense of loss settled within her, every bit as
familiar as it was unwelcome. For so many years, she had kept it locked away, refusing to let its power sway her. But in meeting Matt here today, she had given it entrance, and she didn’t know if she had the strength to turn it back again. For all these years, she’d managed her wants and needs with an unyielding resolve, the way some people managed chronic illness, keeping it just at bay. And maybe she’d seen them that way, her regrets, as a disease with the potential not only to ruin her own life, but so many others as well.

  AARON WAS HALF-WAY between the house and the barn when Becca pulled into the driveway some twenty minutes later. She sat for a moment, willing normalcy into her face. Aaron didn’t deserve any of this. This was the part that sat like a rock on her chest.

  She got out of the truck, going around to the passenger door to gather up the gardening tools she’d taken with her out to the lake.

  She heard the crunch of Aaron’s boots on the gravel drive and turned to face him. “Hi,” she said, hearing guilt in her own voice and yet unable to wipe it away.

  Aaron was a tall man and carried himself with a kind of straight-backed dignity. But she noticed now that his shoulders seemed to tip forward, as if there were a strong wind at his back, the resistance of which he could no longer maintain.

  His gaze dropped the length of her wet dress, questioning. “Where have you been, Becca?”

  “I went out to Mrs. Griffith’s house.”

  “Becca.” Aaron’s voice held a note of something she’d never heard before, and it actually struck a chord of fear inside her. Not of him, or of anything he might do, but of foreboding. As if they had both arrived at a point from which there was no turning back. “You saw him today.”

  The words were without question or accusation, but imbued with a regretful sadness that turned her heart. “Aaron.”

  “Why would you do that to yourself, Becca? Why would you do it to us?”

  There was pain beneath the words, an entire ocean of it, and it was this that collapsed the wall of self-pity inside Becca. She could see now with clear eyes the wrenching result of her absorption, how easy it would be to break a man as strong as Aaron. A man who had done nothing to justify the hand fate had dealt him.

  He walked forward, reached out to grasp her shoulder, reminding her suddenly of the little boy she’d once saved from drowning at a baptism service in the creek behind their church. It had been a cool April morning when the water was really too cold to use for the service, the candidates three teen-age boys certain enough of their hardiness that they were unwilling to consider other options.

  The toddler had wandered too close to the creek’s edge and lost his footing, toppling into the water, the splash so quiet that even with dozens of people milling about, Becca had been the only one to turn at the sound. She’d jumped in after him, instantly sinking beneath the weight of her own shoes and coat. She’d struggled her way back to the surface, frantically reaching for the child. For as long as she lived, she would never forget the feel of his small hand clutching her sleeve, the only connection between him and certain death.

  Standing here now, Aaron’s large hand anchored to her shoulder, she knew that same feeling of responsibility, as if his very life depended on her. On whatever action she took. Whatever choice she made.

  She stared into his quietly pleading eyes, pity infusing her heart. She reached up then and placed her hand over his, felt his relief in the quiet release of his breath, as if he had been holding it all along, uncertain whether she would choose to save him or let him drown.

  38

  Clear Signs

  “Sister – if all this is true, what could I do or undo?”

  ― Sophocles

  Now

  Martha heard the truck pull into the driveway. She left the sheet on Emmy’s bed unfinished and joined her at the window where they both watched Becca get out and Aaron walk up from the barn to meet her. The exchange between them was short, but the tension between them impossible to miss.

  For a moment, an old sense of duty rallied inside her, and she considered going downstairs and talking to Becca about where she’d been today. But she knew, simply from the look on her daughter’s face, that wherever it was, it had involved Matt Griffith.

  On the heels of obligation, though, came a wave of weariness so intense that she had to sit on the chair beside the window, her limbs suffused with a heavy tiredness whose origin she thought more mental than physical.

  All these years, and they thought she did not understand. That she was simply set in her ways, and had no idea what it was to want something she could not have.

  But they were wrong.

  She knew. Too well, she knew. Far better than either Becca or Jacob would ever believe.

  She quickly finished Emmy’s bed and guided her back to it, propping her pillows up against the headboard and then leaving her with a book by her side, knowing she would never read it.

  Martha left the room and went to her own, closing the door and staring hard at the cedar chest at the foot of her four-poster bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually let herself look back, convincing herself there was nothing to be gained from it. Some pains never dulled, though, no matter how many years passed.

  She got up from the chair and knelt down in front of the chest, her right knee cracking with the effort. She turned the latch and opened the lid, running a hand across the carefully folded quilts on top. Her mother had made these, using scraps from the dresses she’d sewn for Martha and her sisters. She lifted one and pressed her face to it, imagining that they still held the wonderful smell of the family kitchen where her mother had gone back and forth between cooking daily meals and working on the quilts she had loved.

  She lifted two more rows from the chest and then saw the small box at the very bottom. It, too, was made of cedar, a gift she supposed she should have given away a long time ago. Something she had never been able to bring herself to do.

  To her knowledge, Daniel had never seen the box. But what reason would he have had to rifle through her quilt chest? Daniel had trusted her without question. With this admission came a pang of guilt for the fact that her secret had outlived her marriage. Somehow, it seemed doubly wrong that Daniel had died without ever knowing she had loved another man.

  She opened the lid to the box, the letters and photos exactly as she had left them. She touched the edge of the black and white picture on top, a too familiar ache setting up in her heart the way bursitis found the same weaknesses in her joints each winter.

  Taken nearly fifty years ago, the photo had faded, softly blurring her face and that of the young man standing next to her, his arm around her waist. Martha had been eighteen, her hair dark and shiny, her skin glowing with youth, the girl here barely recognizable to her now.

  She touched a finger to his face while something she had felt long ago sliced through her, as real to her now as it had been when she had been too young to appreciate its rarity. Mitch. Dark-haired, smile-at-the-ready Mitch.

  There were only two photos, ironically, a beginning and an ending. This first taken at an outlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway during a picnic they’d gone on with two other couples, Mitch the only non-German Baptist boy among them. She remembered how much they’d laughed that day, how then it had seemed as if laughter would always be a part of their lives.

  They’d actually met at church one summer Sunday when Mitch had come to visit with Esau Austin. From the moment they’d been introduced, Martha hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him, and so, he later told her, it had been for him as well. For three months, they’d dated in secrecy, Martha afraid to tell her parents she had fallen in love with someone outside their faith.

  But on the day Mitch had asked her to marry him, he’d done so with the declaration of converting, to live with her as she had grown up living. He didn’t care, he said, as long as they were together.

  Martha touched a hand to her face now, feeling the deep grooves in her skin and finding it hard to believe that a b
oy as young and handsome as Mitch had ever said such things to her. She wondered, as she had many times, what would have happened if he had not been drafted, if they would actually have made that life together.

  The last photo had been taken on the day he’d left for Korea. Esau had driven them to Newport News where the ship that would take him across the world had been docked. He’d taken this picture of them, their arms locked tight about one another in a good-bye kiss.

  She remembered, clearly, the fear she’d felt in those moments,

  “Please come back,” she’d whispered against his cheek.

  “I will,” he’d said.

  He’d only been away for six months when his parents received a visit from officials with news of his death. Esau had been the one to bring the news to Martha, and to this day, the cut of it lay raw in the deepest recesses of her heart.

  With his death had come a sort of confirmation for her. Proof that she had been wrong to veer from a path she had always believed to be right. She had gone on, eventually, marrying Daniel and having a family with him. She had loved Daniel. He’d been a good man, but she understood the difference between the kind of love a woman was simply taken over by and the kind she chose in a rational decision.

  Becca had no way of knowing any of this, and in her daughter’s eyes, Martha knew it must seem as if she’d never had the ability to think with her heart. But she had. And she knew the price of it. Had learned from her experience that sometimes people were given clear signs that they had made the wrong choice.

  For Martha, Mitch had been just such a sign.

  Like Becca, she had allowed her heart to sway her from logic. And like Becca, she had lived to regret it.

  39