“I’m coming.” Avis jabbed her feet into the dirt, making powdery bursts. “I just don’t want to see blood.”
“There won’t be blood. It’s all bandaged. You won’t see a thing. Come on, now.” Idella hoped she was right. She took her thin jacket from her shoulders and wrapped it around the red book she’d carried so carefully. She had an urge to hide the book, to keep it to herself.
She opened the front door and called tentatively. “Dad? You here?”
“Where else would I be?” Dad’s voice came tearing out from his bedroom. “Get in here, you two. Let’s see what Aunt Martha’s done to you. Let’s see how much you’ve grown.”
They set down their bags, Idella placing her covered book on a bench under the windowsill. Then they walked cautiously across the kitchen and pushed back the half-open door to their father’s room. It smelled bad. The chamber pot was on the floor beside the bed. No one had emptied it. Right in the middle of the braided rug, slopped over. Dirty clothes and empty glasses were strewn about the floor. And discarded bandages.
In the middle of the room, lying in a tangle of bedclothes, was Dad, one leg, the good leg, sticking out from the bottom of the bed, hairy and bare. The sheet was stretched across his middle and wrapped up under an armpit. One of the cotton quilts was wadded on the floor. The washbasin lay on the floor beside him, filled with old water. A rusty layer, like fine sand, had settled on the bottom. Old blood.
It was difficult, at first, to focus on him. The evening shadows were like a gray blanket draped over the entire room. Finally Idella’s gaze rested on Dad’s face. He was gaunt and pale. All the color seemed to have gone right out of him—except for his eyes. They were red-rimmed and fiery all around the edges. She could tell that, even in the dim light. His hair had been cut in a strange way, very short, probably by someone at the hospital. He was stubbly and unshaven.
“Damn glad you’re back. I been trapped in this goddamn house like a hornet in a damned jar.” They stood in front of him, Avis strangely shy, hanging behind her bigger sister. He started to rouse himself to a sitting position but was jerked back down as though by an unseen hand. “Son of a bitch.” His face closed up, his eyes squeezed shut, and his breathing became slow and audible.
Idella and Avis stood before him with lowered eyes and clenched fists. Idella had never seen him weakened before or showing pain. It embarrassed her.
Finally he let out a long, slow breath and opened his eyes. “It grabs me still, like a claw.” Idella and Avis nodded. His voice was tired, the blast gone out of it. “It’s healing, mind you. I’ll be on two feet. But it stiffens, see, and there’s goddamned lightning when I try to move it.” He pointed with one hand toward the bandaged mass below his torso. Again the girls stood there nodding. “It come as near to my body as it could, the doctor said, without goin’ in it.” He closed his eyes again. When he opened them, he whispered, “I wanted my girls back. I wanted you with me.” He lay still, spent, and quietly eyed the scrawny creatures before him. He smiled and nodded. “I wanted my girls. . . .” His voice trailed off, and he closed his eyes.
Idella and Avis stood together at the foot of the bed. When a ripple of slow breathing moved down his belly, they realized he had drifted into sleep. “He don’t look right,” Avis whispered.
Idella said nothing. She had never seen his face like this before. His mouth was a little too open. It made her uncomfortable. “Come on,” she whispered. “Let’s leave him be.” She and Avis tiptoed out of the dim bedroom. Idella would have to spend all of the next day making order in the house. It must have been bad even before the accident. Now it was beyond words. But that could all wait till tomorrow.
Mrs. Doncaster had baked a pot of beans and left it for them on the stove. That was a help. Avis was ready to eat the beans cold, but Idella insisted on lighting a fire and heating them through. There was nothing to go with them, but the girls didn’t care. They had to gather dishes from every surface and wash them in cold water before they could even eat off them. When the beans were ready, Idella sent Avis out to the barn to get Dalton. They all three sat around the table, not saying much, till the only sound left was Dalton scraping the spoon across his plate. All Idella could feel was the heaviness of being back, like a weight that made it hard even to breathe.
Suddenly from Dad’s room came a yell. “Where the hell’s my supper? I brought you all the way home by train, goddamn it, and you’re going to sit out there and let me rot lying in here on my backside? I smell beans.”
Dalton abruptly pushed back his chair and stood. “I been taking it from him four days now. I’m ’bout done with it. I got used to bein’ on my own, with him in the hospital, and I won’t be goin’ backwards. He can’t hit me no more. Be sleeping in the barn tonight. Animals is better company than the likes and smell of him.”
Tears started streaming down Idella’s face. She felt all alone in this godforsaken place. She watched as Dalton walked over to the door and opened it, stepping out into the night without even a glance back. Avis sat crumpled in her seat. From the bedroom Dad’s voice grew louder. “Where the hell are you? Della, bring me something to eat!”
Without a word Idella got up and scooped a plate of beans out of the warm pot. Wiping her eyes with her sleeve, she stood for a moment in front of the stove, until she was done with her crying for sure. Then she quietly walked into the bedroom with the plate of beans.
“Give me a hand, goddamn it. Help me sit up.”
She propped his pillow behind him as best she could with one hand and gave him the warm plate with the other.
“Get rid of this mess, will you, Dell?” Dad waved his hand around the room, spilling a spoonful of beans across his blanket as he did it. “Having you back’s goin’ to make things a damn lot easier around here. Your cookin’s a hell of a lot better than mine and Dalton’s, or that goddamned hospital slop they threw at me.”
Idella’s foot touched the cold china washbasin on the floor. She bent down to pick it up and carry it out. It was so full and heavy that some of it spilled over her bare foot, cold and clammy. She stared down at the dark stain the water made on the floor. Enough had spilled to make a stream that followed the slant of the floorboards, heading out toward the kitchen. She looked into the bowl, the brown and bloody water still lapping the edges. It made her dizzy and ill. She could not breathe this stifling air, heavy with the smells of sickness.
“What’re you standing there for?”
Idella lifted her head and walked unsteadily into the kitchen, past Avis, who had kept herself in the shadows as best she could.
“Let me out, Avis,” Idella said, “or I’ll be sick in the middle of the floor.”
Avis ran over and opened the kitchen door. “Where you going, Della?” Idella walked past her without a word, out into the middle of the road that led between the house and barn. She stopped, still holding the basin of dirty water, and took a deep breath. She had to get air into her lungs. Clean air. She could hear the water sluicing between the rocks far below, at the bottom of the cliff. The tide was coming in.
She was flooded with impulses—to walk to the rocky edge and gaze down into the blackness where she knew the water was; to run, escape like a deer, through the field and into the woods.
She dragged her bare feet against the earth, feeling small rocks between her toes, scraping clammy wetness from the tops of her feet. She started circling, slowly, turning in small circles, her head bent back to the sky. Stars and clouds skittered across the moon like smoke. She started to circle faster. The stars blurred into tiny streaks. Idella held the basin away from her, at arm’s length, and started spinning and spinning. Water spewed from the edges of the bowl in a scattering circle. Cold droplets spattered her arm. The ground felt gritty and wonderful. She could see, in a blur, little Avis standing in the kitchen doorway, lit from within, watching.
Idella opened her mouth. It filled with wind. A sound flowed out of her, a soft and steady gust. The water basin’s weight
was pulling her now, round and round and round with the sound. Suddenly the words to the poem rose up within her and poured out into the fresh, wonderful air. “‘Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal.’” She spun over near the edge of the cliff and released the china basin, opening her hands to the black cavern of air. The basin flew from her, a white vessel cast out into the darkness. She spun lightly away on tiptoe. Somewhere, far below, it crashed. Dalton came to the barn door and looked out. Idella saw his lean silhouette, one arm reaching overhead against the doorframe, watching her spin.
She slowed and looked up into the night sky. The sound coming out of her softened to a flutter and became the sound of her breathing. She planted her feet in a broad stance in the shaggy grass. The stars were swirling overhead, dizzy in a bright, bright sky. Idella let her knees buckle. She lowered herself clumsily backward, until she could feel the long, cool field grass down her whole length.
She lay flat on her back and looked up into the tumbling sky, then closed her eyes. The space behind her eyelids continued to spin. She ran her hands across the grass and clutched at scratchy wads of it. There was a rock under her shoulder blade, cold and hard. It had been here forever, probably, the whole time she was alive, buried in the hard-packed ground. It had been here when her mother was alive and the whole time Idella was gone down to Maine. It’d be here still after she was gone.
Idella listened hard. She could hear the water far below the dark cliff, lolling and slapping over the rocks. A cow drawled from the barn. The Doncaster dog was barking off in the woods. She was back up in Canada. Nothing much had changed, nothing the eye could see.
“Della?” Avis’s wisp of a voice floated cautiously in her direction. “Della, you done?”
Idella sighed in the darkness and then called out, “I’m coming, Avis. I’m coming right back in.”
Avis stood in the doorway waiting. When Idella got to the dim pool of light by the kitchen door, Avis reached out her hand. “Can we go up to bed now?”
Idella hugged her. “You go on upstairs and go to bed.”
“Aren’t you comin’, too?”
“I’ll be up in a minute. You’ll be all right. Go on now. I’ll check on Dad, and then I’ll be up. Here, take the lamp with you and set it on the bureau. I’ll get a candle.” She went over to the sideboard and took a candle from its holder. Carefully lifting the glass chimney from the oil lamp on the table, she lit the candle and stuck it back into its holder. “Here now, take this.” She offered Avis the lamp. “Walk slow and steady. I’ll blow it out when I get up there. Good night, Avis. We’ve had a long day.”
“G’night, Della.” Avis was so tired she could barely speak. She carefully held the oil lamp with both her hands. Idella stood in the kitchen watching her wobbly steps all the way up to the top.
Idella continued to stand in the center of the kitchen, her candle flame the only light. She stared into its warm, wavery yellow, eyeing the dark veins of blue that flickered at its core. She felt peaceful, spent. Here she was, back on the farm, back in the kitchen, where she’d spend all of the next day and plenty more days after that washing and scrubbing and fetching for Dad. She’d never been down here alone like this so late at night. Dad was always around, always stayed up late. Already the little schoolhouse in Maine, the teacher, the blackboard, the books seemed long distant, more than a train ride away.
She thought of her book. It was still where she’d put it near the door. She walked over and picked it up and turned toward the stairs. There had been no sound from Dad’s room. Idella went up to the half-opened door and peeked in. He was lying there, awake, staring up at the ceiling in the darkening room.
“What’s that? What’s that noise?”
“It’s me.”
“Idella?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing out there?”
“Nothing.”
“Come in here. Come in. Bring the light.” His voice was different, soft somehow.
Idella shyly opened the bedroom door. She had never visited him in the night before, never come to him with her nightmares or fears or illnesses. She’d been afraid. Afraid to bother him—he worked so hard and got up so early. Afraid to anger him—he was so quick-tempered. Afraid.
He looked helpless lying there under the bedclothes, long and thin. His beard was growing in all scruffy. He’d been unable to shave, and it made his face dark and shadowy as she held up the candle.
“Tell me, did you like school? Did you like going to live with your Aunt Martha?”
Idella looked down at the blackness of the floor. She felt somehow ashamed. “Yes, sir, I loved it.”
“You loved it, eh?” He lay in the darkness, but she could feel his eyes upon her. “You loved it.”
“More than anything.” There was a long pause. She could hear his breathing. “I passed the eighth-grade test when I’m not even in that grade yet.”
“Did you? Well, Della, that’s good. I think that’s good. Your mother would have liked to hear that. She was a great one for books, you know. You prob’ly don’t remember. She used to read to me by the hour.”
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“This is the bed where she died, you know. Right here in this spot. I should have moved the bed. She must have stared up at the ceiling there, same as me.”
Idella lifted her candle till it glowed on the ceiling. Sometimes it was hard to imagine that she’d really had a mother. Her memories didn’t seem real.
There was another long pause. “Idella, I need to pee, and I can’t wait till morning, and I can’t get to the damn pot by myself. Dalton’s nowhere to be seen or heard from. I’m going to need you to help lift me out of here and get me the pot.”
“Yes, sir.” Idella carefully placed the book and candle on the small table next to his bed and walked over to the chamber pot in the middle of the floor. She lifted it and carried it over to her father’s bed.
“Take this arm and pull me up first. . . . AHH, goddamn it.” He took a long, deep breath. Idella reached down and grasped the offered arm but was afraid of what to do next. “Go on now, give it a pull. It won’t come out, it’ll just hurt like a son of a bitch down below. Come on now, Della. Give a pull.” She pulled till he was in a sitting position, wincing with pain.
“Now get my legs out over the edge. Go slow, especially with the left there.” Idella reached down and guided his legs, one at a time, over the edge. “Jesus, Mary, and the little bastard, too! Good girl, Della. Now get the damn pot. You gotta hold it right up to me, ’cause I ain’t gonna stand. Put it right there and hold it. I’ll do the rest.”
Idella held the pot up with both her hands to where he pointed. She closed her eyes and turned her head toward the window. She could tell by the sharp intake of his breath how difficult it was. She kept her eyes closed and waited till the sound of pee splashing into the metal pot had stopped.
“Holy Mother of God, that does it. Help me back in now.”
Idella placed the warm, pee-filled pot on the floor next to him and helped guide him back into bed. “Would you like something to drink, Dad?” she asked him.
“Well, now, that’d start the whole thing flowin’ again. I’ll wait till mornin’ before I go through that goddamned rigmarole again.” A faint smile crossed his wan face. “You’d best go on up to bed now. You’ve had a big day. Leave me a light on, will you? I’m like as not to lie here awake till morning. My leg burns so, I can’t sleep.”
Idella lit the lamp next to his bed with her candle and turned to go. Then she saw her book lying on the table where she’d put it. She walked over, picked it up, and held it close for a moment. Then she turned around and looked at her father, who was quietly watching.
“Would you like me to read to you, Dad? Like Mother used to? Would you like me to read from my book?” She saw his startled expression. Without waiting for an answer, she took a small cane-bottom chair from the corner of the room and pulled it over next to the oil
lamp.
She sat and opened her book. “‘The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. Chapter One.’” Idella’s voice was trembly and shy. “‘I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, . . .’ ” Idella looked up. “Can you hear me, Dad?”
He nodded. There were tears in his eyes.
Idella continued slowly and carefully, “ ‘. . . though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. . . .’ ”
She read for more than an hour, until he had finally drifted off into a merciful sleep. She sat watching for a while, then took from the pocket of her skirt the handkerchief Mrs. Elmhurst had given her. Laying it flat against the open page, she marked her place and put the book on the bedside table where he would be sure to see it. Then she tiptoed back up to her room.
Avis’s Cow
September 1922
“Bossy! Bosssyyyyy!” Avis called up into the darkening sky and down into the already dark shadows of the woods. She had gone over every inch of the field looking for her cow. Now she felt her foot slide as she stepped down into the middle of a large cow patty at the edge of the woods. “A nice fresh one,” she said out loud, grabbing a stick and scraping the bottom of her shoe. “If Bossy can’t hear me, she can sure as hell smell me now. Wanderin’ off where she’s got no business.”
Dad had given the calf to Avis four months ago. He had brought it into the house wrapped in his arms, no more than a day old. The cow was bawling the whole time. Dad had plunked it down in front of Avis as she’d sat at the table shelling peas with Idella. “Look what I found in the hay this morning,” he’d said to her, “a rapscallion, like you. So I’m givin’ it to you. It’s yours.”
He’d put the calf down on the big hooked rug and walked out, laughing, wiping his large hands on the seat of his pants. The calf had stood there, all rickety, raised up its tail, and started a stream of pee out the backside that was aimed dead center of that rug. Idella’d let out a scream to wake the dead and run around calling, “Get a bucket! Get a bucket! For God’s sake, get a bucket!”
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay Page 12