All the Forgivenesses

by Elizabeth Hardinger

  * * *

  When it come up the first cold day, Sam built a brush fire down by the slough in the back of the property. I’d got fat frankfurters at Arbogost’s, the juicy kind with the thick skin that squeaks when you break it with your teeth. I threaded the franks on sticks, and me and Sam and Hiram stood there roasting them. We was cold in the back and hot in the front, next to the fire.

  Sam asked Hiram, “It get very cold where you was at?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  “Ever get any snow?”

  “A couple of times. We could see mountaintops with snow on them. Mostly it rained.”

  Sam nodded.

  “How you doing, Trouble?” I said. He was setting there all wrapped up, looking miserable, staring at the fire. Sarah, she was playing among the embers at the edge. She liked to pick up burning sticks and walk around carrying them like they was candles.

  “Sure smells good, don’t it?” Sam said.

  “Makes my mouth water,” Hiram said.

  “Always tastes better outdoors,” Sam said.

  “When it first got cold, back in Kentucky where I come up, why, we’d build a fire like this,” I said. “Mama, she’d butter up some corn on the cob and wrap them back up in their shucks and set them on the very edge of the fire. That was some good eating.”

  “What’s cob?” said Sarah.

  “We didn’t have no sweet corn this year, but maybe we’ll plant some next year,” I said. “Then you’ll see what corn on the cob looks like.” All the sudden I realized I ought not to have said that—who knowed where they’d be at next year?

  “These is done, I believe,” Sam said.

  I wrapped a slice of light bread around each frankfurter and handed one to Sam. “You children ever see a jack-o’-lantern?” I said.

  Hiram and Sarah shook their heads.

  “Wait’ll you taste turkey and pumpkin pie.” I give Hiram a sandwich.

  “I heard of that,” he said. “Dacia used to talk about it.”

  “Thanksgiving?” Sam said, chewing.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Hiram said. “I thought it was made up. She told us made-up stories sometimes.”

  I smiled. “Well, Thanksgiving’s real. It’s not no fairy tale.” I give Sarah her sandwich and walked over to where Trouble was setting on a tree stump.

  “This here’s fairy land,” Sarah said. “Like Mama said.”

  I winced and muttered, “She knowed better than to say something like that.”

  Trouble reached out for the food, and I said, “Can you ask for it?”

  “Bertie,” Sam said.

  “Am I ever going to see my mother again in my whole life?” Sarah said through tears.

  I held Trouble’s sandwich out to him. “Just say the words. I know you can.”

  Trouble’s eyes went almost all white, and then he jumped up and started running around in the half-froze mud, blindly, screaming like an animal.

  I stood still for a moment, transfixed. For the first time I was truly afraid of what he might do, afraid of him himself.

  Then in a split second, Trouble flew into the fire, his arms and legs whirling, and, just as fast, Sam was in there after him, grabbing him and pulling him out onto the ground, rolling him, and then Sam and Hiram together grabbed him up and carried him into the house. I was steps behind them, Sarah in my arms, without no memory of moving.

  When me and Sarah got to the house, Sam’d already ran a bowl of cold water and was holding Trouble’s hand in there. Trouble was thrashing, wailing, but Hiram had him pinned like a calf.

  Panting, Sam said to me, “Just a blister on his thumb and scorched off his eyebrows.”

  “Thank God,” I said.

  “Take her out of here,” Sam said.

  “What?”

  “Go on, get out,” he said through his teeth. “She don’t need to see this.”

  I cupped my hand on the back of Sarah’s head and carried her into me and Sam’s bedroom. She was bawling, and I set on the bed and rocked her. Wasn’t long before I was bawling, too.

  For a while after that, I never hardly asked Trouble to talk. I got to where, if Sam was present, I looked over at him before I said anything at all to Trouble. Sam, for a long while he never said nothing to me about it. Never had to.

  * * *

  Then the day come when I said I’d help at the thrift shop next to the First Christian Church of Wiley. The church ladies had the thrift shop to raise money for poor people. Me and Sam, why, we was keeping up with the bills, but there was many that wasn’t, farming being depressed and oil drilling slowing down. You didn’t have to go to the church—which we didn’t—to help out at the shop. I’d made a half a dozen baby quilts, along with my dishtowel sets with the appliqued rooster and hen. On the rooster one, I embroideryed, I rule the roost, and the hen said, I rule the rooster. People liked them for wedding showers.

  Sam dropped me and Sarah off at the shop. Sarah, the ladies fussed over her and give her trinkets. She hardly ever stopped talking, seemed like.

  Now Sam, he took Trouble to the Community Building, where Sam and his buddies was going to practice for a dance that night. It would only take an hour, he’d told me, and Trouble would be all right for that amount of time. And there would be music.

  This is how Sam always tells what happened. His friend Merle Ediger played the piano, Duane Karst played the accordion, and Fred Epling played clarinet and saxophone. Sometimes they had a man who played washboard and Jew’s harp, but he wasn’t there that day. Alta Bea’s husband, Harold, now, he played banjo, but he hadn’t played with them for years, since he started working as a lease broker shortly after the war.

  Sam come in with Trouble, introduced him around—Trouble never looked at nobody, of course—and found him a place in the corner to set. Then the men visited for a while, tuned up, played some scales, and picked the first tune, “Maple Leaf Rag.” Then they played “Missouri Waltz,” “Swallowtail Jig,” and “Buffalo Gals.” On the last one they stopped and started several times since they couldn’t decide on who should come in at what place. Then they played three or four more songs and took a break. Merle, the piano player, he got up and left to get beer. It had to do with a bet, I forget the details.

  They was standing around talking when Trouble got up and set down at the piano. He put his fingers on the keys, moved his hands around a little, and started up playing “Maple Leaf Rag.” He played it all the way through, just like Merle had, without no mistakes and using all the right fingers.

  Duane said, “Hey, you didn’t tell us—”

  Sure enough, before he even finished his remark Trouble started up playing “Missouri Waltz.” Now this song was in a different key and different time than the rag, but it didn’t make no never mind to Trouble. He played it on through. Then he played “Swallowtail Jig.”

  By this time Merle was back with the beers, and a bottle of pop for Trouble. “You get a new piano player while I was gone?” he said, joking like.

  Trouble never slowed down. He went right into “Buffalo Gals.” What was funny was, he played it three different ways, just like they done, at the part where they had made the changes, and then he played it the way they’d decided to, and then he went ahead and finished it. And then, why, he played the other three or four songs they’d done.

  Now pretty much everbody in town knowed that Trouble was afflicted. But nobody knowed he could play the piano, including us, of course.

  They all started to talk at once, figured he was done. But then he proceeded to play the songs Sam had played at home on the fiddle! When he was playing before, he was imitating Merle, they all reckoned, which was big enough of a surprise. But when he started playing the songs he only heard Sam play on the fiddle, now that took them aback, because the piano ain’t the fiddle.

  There wasn’t no stopping him, and after while the men just shook Sam’s hand, gathered up their things, and left. Sam stayed there and listened to Trouble play for a long while w
ithout repeating a song. When he was finished, Trouble got up from the piano and went and set down.

  But I didn’t know all that when Sam come to the church to get me and Sarah. All I knowed, they was later than I expected. I asked him, “Where you been all this time?”

  “We got to get us a piano,” he said.

  “Where-at are we gonna put a piano?” I helped Sarah climb in the truck.

  “What’s a yanno?” Sarah said.

  Trouble started pretending he was playing a piano on his lap.

  “Don’t know,” Sam said to me. “Don’t know how we’re gonna pay for it, neither.”

  I slammed the door shut. “You see what he’s doing?”

  “Wait’ll you hear—”

  “We’re talking about a piano, and he’s acting like he’s playing one,” I said.

  “He can play. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He set down—”

  “Sam, listen to me,” I said.

  “I’m hungry,” Sarah said.

  “He played the piano,” Sam said. “Over at the hall. You should have heard him, Bertie.”

  “What? Look at the road.”

  “Set down and played a bunch of songs, one after the other,” he said.

  Trouble was still pretending to play on his lap.

  “How?” I said.

  “Damn if I know.”

  “I’m hungry,” Sarah said. “When we gonna eat?”

  “Beat anything I ever heard,” Sam said. “Never missed a note. You never seen the like.”

  “Wonders never cease.” I couldn’t hardly take it in.

  “Played ever song we played, and—”

  “But what I’m saying is—look,” I said. “We’re setting here talking about a piano, and look at him, what he’s doing. It’s like he knows.”

  “I’m hungry,” Sarah said.

  I petted her. “We’ll have supper soon’s we get home.”

  “Trouble?” Sam said. “You hear me? You want a piano to play at home or not?”

  Trouble never looked up.

  “But I’m hungry now,” Sarah said.

  “He ain’t listening,” Sam said to me.

  I dug around in my purse. “Ain’t nothing to eat in this truck, so there’s no use—oh wait, here.” I found a mint, and I popped it into Sarah’s mouth.

  “Don’t go and get your hopes up,” Sam said.

  “I’m not.”

  “Well, don’t.”

  “I’m not, I said.”

  After while he said, “Next Saturday, I’m taking the whole day off. We’re getting a piano.”

  Trouble never stopped playacting all the way home. About getting a piano, he never said nothing one way or the other. That was all Sam’s idea.

  * * *

  It had been ten years since me and Sam’d been in the Rosewater and Sons funeral home, since Will died. Mrs. Whiteside, she’d made all the arrangements, including picking out the coffin, and me and Sam just come by for the visitation the night before the burial. So I’d about forgot what it looked like inside, though when we walked in, the smell of flowers was real familiar. The front room had couches and tables and lamps and an Oriental rug, plus the two pianos—an upright and a grand, both Steinways. They was there to look at before you ordered one from a catalog, Sam had told me. I never knowed that. I never even knowed the funeral home sold pianos.

  Sam walked over to the upright, pulled up the bench, set down, and started playing.

  I whispered to him to stop, there might be grieving people in the next room, but he kept on playing. Right away a man come in, about forty, all dressed in black, with a white carnation in his lapel. He didn’t make no sound. He seemed to float across the floor like he didn’t have no feet. Up close, he smelled waxy.

  He laid his hand on Sam’s arm. “How may I be of assistance?” he whispered.

  “Just looking.” Sam pressed the pedal to dampen the sound and started playing scales, his head tilted in the direction of the sound board.

  “You have any secondhand pianos?” I said.

  The salesman made an O with his lips.

  “Don’t want no secondhand piano,” Sam said.

  “Millard Rosewater,” the man said, sticking out his hand. Sam lifted his hands from the keys like they was glued on, and he turned and give Millard a quick handshake.

  “You’re interested in the K-52, I see,” Millard said, smiling.

  “Just looking,” Sam said.

  Millard nodded. He reached over and gently closed the fall-board, and then he run his fingers over it. “Satin ebony,” he said, kind of breathless. “It also comes in Chippendale mahogany, Chippendale walnut, Louis the Fifteenth—”

  “How long’s it take?” Sam said.

  “Pardon?”

  “To get here. From the catalog.”

  Millard glanced at me and back at Sam. “And will you be the main operator, sir?”

  “A week, a month, what?”

  They went on this way, like men does.

  It was a cool fall day outside, but it was awful close in that room. They kept the windows and drapes closed, and the flowers was giving off a smell of brown water. I excused myself and walked outside, standing for a moment under the awning. I pulled in a deep breath and took off my hat to let the breeze cool my scalp.

  It was hard to think about anything except Trouble acting like he was playing the piano as me and Sam was talking about it, like he was making a connection with the words. I knowed I wasn’t supposed to get my hopes up, but I didn’t know how not to. Hope was what I was living off of.

  I stepped into the dried leaves scattered on the walkway. I had on the new ankle-high shoes that come in during the twenties. I looked around and didn’t see nobody, so I pulled them off and plunged my stocking feet into the crunchy leaves. It felt so good I laughed out loud.

  I turned around to get a good look at the building. It looked big and heavy—three stories tall and made of white limestone, with high, arched windows and a bell tower in the back. I wondered if it was originally a church. It looked awful old. I didn’t have nothing better to do, so I put my shoes back on and wandered out back to see what was there. Evidently that was where they brought in the corpses—there was a pair of big wide doors, a couple of cars, and a long black hearse. The hearse had AMBULANCE painted on it.

  I heard footsteps. Sam was walking toward me, and I seen he had papers rolled up in one hand. He was smiling big, like he done. Five foot away he said, almost hollering, “I talked him into the floor model! They’re bringing it Monday after work!”

  He took aholt of me and started dancing me around in the sandy gravel. Let me tell you, it’d been a long time since he done that. I felt stiff-legged and stiff-necked both. I let him whirl me for a minute, and then I wriggled out of his arms. “You bought that piano?”

  He waved the papers. “Talked him down a hundred dollars!”

  That alarmed me. “You talked him down—how much did it cost?”

  “It’s a 1925 model, see, two years old, and I—”

  I grabbed at the papers in his hand. One of them tore, and I snatched up the scrap from off the ground. The two pieces together said: One Steinway, K-52, satin ebony, floor model. Eight hundred and ninety-five dollars.

  A swear word come to me, but I swallowed it back. I stood there with my mouth open.

  “It’s a bargain,” he said. “I know pianos.”

  I stared at the paper. “This could almost buy a whole Sears house.”

  He shrugged. “We’ve got a house.”

  “Where’s this money coming from?” I was looking at numbers I’d never imagined I would have nothing to do with.

  “Fifteen down, fifteen a month.” He smacked the other paper with his finger.

  “We’re borrowing it? You?”

  He took a step back. “We can make the payments. Don’t worry.”

  “We’re borrowing? This much money? Borrowing?”

  “He needs it.”

  “It
’s so much.” I pictured that satin ebony piano, polished and gleaming, not a nick on it, standing on the linoleum in the corner of the front room, pushed against a wall plastered with newspapers. It seemed comical. Our actual piano—the one I pictured us buying—it would be an old one somebody’d painted pink, scratched up, one leg replaced, a couple key covers missing.

  Sam folded his arms. “I told you, we can make the payments.”

  “I know. But this.”

  A breeze sprung up, stirring the dust and smelling of ripe leaves and coming rain. Nearby, somebody was burning brush, and the wind had smoke in it, too. I blinked and wiped my eyes on my sleeve.

  “You act like I’m not them kids’ father,” Sam said.

  I was startled. I didn’t know what to say.

  “You tell me,” he said. “Back when it was just Dacia and Opal, who’s the one said let’s move to Kansas so we’d have two nickels to rub together? And now, who’s the one took a new job and moved to the oil field for these kids’ sakes? And who’s the one fought against it?”

  I got my back up, and I opened my mouth to speak, but he took a step toward me. “We’re doing all right, ain’t we?” he said. “Anybody hounding us? Food on the table? Shoes to wear?”

  I stared at him. I never seen him so riled.

  “It’s the both of us, not just you,” he said. “The both of us.”

  “I know that.”

  “So in the hospital, what did you do but offer me a divorce? How do you think that made me feel?” He choked when he said divorce.

  “You had ever right—”

  He let go of me, and his arms flew up. “It ain’t about ever right, never has been. It’s what we mean to each other—or I thought so, anyhow. Where you think I been these ten years? I know you been through a lot. I tried to go through it with you, much as I could. When you let me.”

  I thought about the babies I lost and never told him about. The one I lost during the war. I felt a cloud of shame settle over me, and I looked at the ground.

  “I been here,” he said.

  “I know. It’s just . . .” Now I looked him in the eye. Mama always said, Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. “Do you really love these children? Not just tolerate them for my sake?”