She didn't go with Emma two days later when her sister went to visit Colby. Instead, Annie got her mother's Bible out thinking she could find some solace in the good Book. She was a bit taken aback to find her mother’s bible had hundreds of passages underlined and with little notes out to the side of almost every page. It seemed that since Mrs. Stotley couldn’t get her husband to agree with her on issues of morals, she had sought her confirmations from the highest of authorities. Annie read through looking at all the highlighted passages, searching for something to relieve her from her emotional distress. One of the passages her mother had underlined twice read, "In case a man happens to have a son who is stubborn and rebellious, not listening to the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and they have corrected him but he will not listen to them, his father and his mother must also take hold of him and bring him out to the older men of his city and to the gate of his place, and they must say to the older men of his city, 'This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he is not listening to our voice, being a glutton and a drunkard.' Then all the men of his city must pelt him with stones, and he must die. So you must clear away what is bad from your midst, and all Israel will hear and indeed become afraid.” It was Deuteronomy 21:18-21. She read this and, knowing her mother had highlighted it because she wholly believed in it, Annie put away the Bible having found no relief from God's words. On the contrary, she now felt much worse and much more scared. She crept into bed early and cried to herself. What would her parents think of her having sex with a man outside of wedlock like that. "Harlot!" her mother would call her. “Jezebel!” And rightly so, for that's just what she felt like. And when Candace crept in bed with her that night she held her tightly hoping some of her sister's purity would rub off on her. When she finally fell asleep she found herself standing in the church. It must have been Sunday sermon because everyone in town was there. She dreamed she was having sex with Abram right there before the pulpit in front of everyone, and that her mother suddenly stood up from her pew and pleaded with everyone to help her cleanse her sinful daughter. Then Abram disappeared with a sly smile, and everyone in the church suddenly began gathering up big rocks that had appeared at their feet and they started throwing them at her, pelting her with them over and over again. Everyone she cared about was there, her parents, Marcus, Candace, that cute boy Gerald, even Emma had a stone, and they were all hurling them at her. She looked to Marcus and said, “Please, make them stop!” But he was angry with her and only said, “If you ain’t got better sense . . .” and then he hit her with his rock. The only one who wasn’t throwing stones at her was her parents. Mr. Stotley was sitting stoic on his pew smoking his pipe and staring into nothingness. He seemed either not to notice or not to care that Annie was being stoned to death. And finally, when she felt her insides crushed from the blows, everyone stopped and looked to Mrs. Stotley, who had finally reached down and gathered up a stone. "It was to save your soul," she told Annie. And then she threw the last rock. Annie woke up, panicked and frightened, thinking she’d just died. She looked around expecting to see the town around her, rocks in hand. Instead, she found Emma sleeping soundly beside her and Candace in her own bed, undoubtedly dreaming of Colby and love, seemingly at peace without a care in the world. Annie had never been so jealous of her sister in all her life.
As the weeks went on Annie stayed away from worker’s row. Emma would come home with pleas from Abram, or wild flowers he had picked for her. He even had Emma give her a very nice carving of a horse he’d done, but Annie didn’t want it and gave it to Candace instead.
Emma couldn't understand why Annie was acting so distant, "He’s not so bad, Annie. I think maybe he really loves you." And as the guilt and shame ate at Annie another thought entered her mind, one of salvation and repentance. What if she were to marry Abram? Then, even though they had done wrong by having sex that would at least make things somewhat right. Maybe she could even bring herself to look at her mother again without hating herself. And so she went back with Emma to the shack Colby and Abram shared and she let Abram lay with her and have his way, all the while resigning herself that she would marry Abram eventually and things would work out for the best.
I realized after putting all the pieces together so many years later that Mama had trapped herself in her own mind, and that’s why she married Pap. Whether it was the threat of her own mother’s moral condemnations, Emma’s well-meaning prodding, or just because Mama was so young, I don’t think she felt there was anything else she could do. It seems so often the case that people who think they’re up against a wall don’t realize it’s only themselves doing the pushing.
One morning, before the early light had called even Mr. Stotley awake, Annie woke up tormented with nausea. She snuck out of the room and through the front room where Marcus slept, and out the back door. There she heaved her guts out everywhere. She was sick again that evening, and the next day. She told Emma about it and Aunt Emma seemed to know just what it meant, "Oh, shit, Annie. How have you and Abram been doing it? Does he pull out when his stuff comes out, or does he stay inside?"
"He normally just stays inside," she said.
"Oh, Lord, Annie, you can't do it that way. That's how you get pregnant."
Annie didn't say anything. The words seemed to float around her instead of being absorbed. Then slowly they crawled inside of her and ate at her heart. "You think I'm pregnant?" she asked Emma.
She seemed to think on it a bit, "The way you been throwing up and he been doing his business inside of you . . . yeah, Annie. I hate to say it but I think maybe you are." There was a long pause and Emma said, almost as an afterthought, “Mama’s going to have a fit.” Annie broke down into tears. Emma put her big man arms around Annie. “Oh, I’m sorry Annie. I shouldn’t have said that. Mama thinks the whole world is going to hell, anyway. Don’t you go frettin’ what she’s gonna think.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” cried Annie.
Emma was confused. “Tell you? Tell you what?”
“That that’s how I’d get pregnant!” yelled Annie.
“Well, hell, Annie, I thought you knew. I thought everybody knew that. And even if you didn’t, Abram knows it. It never crossed my mind that you two wouldn’t have the sense to not do it that way. There’s always the chance you can end up pregnant when you do it, anyway. I thought you knew that.”
And the truth was Annie did. She just didn’t think it was going to happen to her, at least not this soon. “God’s punishing me,” she cried. “He’s punishing me for what I did.”
“Oh, now, don’t go getting all worked up. You’re sounding like Mama now. Nobody’s punishing you; this is just how things work.”
“What am I going to do?” she asked Emma.
Emma held her close. “Well, you’d better tell Abram. You’re both just going to have to grow up a little faster than you planned, that’s all. He’s overdue for a little growing up, no how. And I don’t say it to make you feel worse, Annie, but you still got some childish ways about you. You’re going to be a mama, and that means you’ve got to learn to open your eyes a little more.”
Annie wasn’t exactly sure what Emma was making reference to, but she did know she suddenly felt older than her fourteen years. She felt a great weight about her, and somewhere inside she knew she’d never giggle and skip like Candace ever again. It was as though her own childhood had just abandoned her completely.
When Annie told Abram that she thought she might be pregnant he didn't seem to take much notice of it. He sat on their blanket after they had finished their intimacy staring off in the distance. She kept looking at him waiting for a response. "Well, what you want me to say?" he asked.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't know what to do, I guess."
He continued looking off. "Me, neither," he finally told her. “I need to take me a walk and think on this a bit.” And with that, he got up, buttoned up his clothes, and strolled away into the fields.
That night Abram told Colby h
e was thinking of leaving Varner Creek. He said he wanted to go East like the other fellas had and see what was there. He wanted Colby to come with him, but Colby wouldn’t hear of it.
"No," he told Abram bluntly. "I'm staying here. And as soon as I get me enough money I'm going to marry Emma and build us a house."
Abram tried to talk him into it. "Well, I don't want to go by myself. What do you want to stay here with that girl for, anyway? She ain’t much of a looker."
Colby’s face immediately reddened and it was clear Abram was dangerously close to crossing a line he didn’t want to cross. “I love Emma, and I’m staying.” Then he followed it up by saying something most unexpected, "And you ain't going nowhere, neither."
"What you mean by that?" asked Abram.
"You done got Annie pregnant. Emma told me so. And you ain't going to leave her with a bastard child. She deserve better than that. Besides, her brother and daddy would hunt you down." He looked at Abram with intense resolution, "And I'd probably join them."
Abram was stung. He couldn't believe what Colby had just said. "What's wrong with you!?" he exclaimed. "I thought we was friends."
"We are," said Colby, "but Annie be Emma's sister and a sweet girl. It ain't right you gone and got her pregnant and then going to run off like that. And even though we don’t always see eye to eye on everything, I never figured you the type to try and skip out like you are. You done told me once you wanted to lay with Annie Stotley. Remember that? Well, now you have and she’s pregnant. You going to have to cowboy up and be a man, now."
Abram took the whiskey bottle out from under his bed and sat down with his back against the door inside the little shack he and Colby shared. "Shit," he said. He thought about leaving on his own but he didn't know where to go, and the thought of being hounded by not only the Stotley men but also his own friend Colby was enough to discourage the thought. He pictured Annie and thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad. She did have a good nature and was pretty as she could be. Prettier than he thought he'd end up with. Still, the thought of settling down and having a baby crying all the time and crapping all over the place scared the hell out of him. His own childhood had been a nightmare. He never planned on having kids of his own. He was going to plant his tobacco, make lots of money, and spend his days carousing with his buddies, drinking late into the night, playing cards, having a different woman every night. He could see his dreams, or fantasies as they more accurately could be called, falling down around him. "But what about our plans, Colby? We were going to make it big with our tobacco."
"Mr. Pyle say cotton better to grow, and don't nobody want to be buying tobacco so much as they do cotton. I’ve got me a new plan, now. Me and Emma going to have a family and I'm going to be a cotton farmer." And that was the end of Abram’s hopes of running away and being a rich hemp farmer.
"I guess I'd better start saving up, too," Abram said. "I’m gonna have to put her and that baby somewhere."
And so just a few months later, around the time that Marcus was beginning to make a name for himself in metal working, there were three weddings in Varner Creek, Marcus Stotley married Mary Jo Greenley, Colby Patterson married Emma Stotley, and Abram Mayfield married Annie Stotley. Mr. Stotley was beside himself with happiness with three children out of the house all at once.
True to his word, Colby built himself and Emma a nice, sturdy two-bedroom home that would be added on to later, complete with a separate kitchen area from the front room and a large front porch. Everyone in town was impressed with the home he built. He had purchased the land from Mr. Pyle on a payment schedule and would, many, many, years later come to own most of the farm when Mrs. Pyle left it to him after her passing.
Abram had moved Annie with him to worker’s row. Mr. Stotley was happy to have her leave and start a family of her own and Mrs. Stotley was so disgraced by her pregnant child that she couldn't find it in her heart to ask Annie to stay. Instead, she took to clutching her Bible with her everywhere she went, and even seemed as though she might be talking to it on occasions. Marcus was so mad he all but disowned Annie. He could barely even look at her for marrying that man he hated so much. Candace was the only one that wept and cried miserably when she left. Annie would have cried, too, except she felt numb inside. She felt like she was paying for her sins. And when her baby arrived and didn't develop correctly, she thought that was God's way of punishing her, too. Either that or the devil had thrown in his lot on top of God's harsh will, and it wouldn't be the last time she thought that.
A lot of things happened in the early years of Abram and Annie Mayfield's marriage. Marcus, of course, moved away with his new bride. He lived in Houston up until December of 1900. Right after the Houston railroad finally reached Varner Creek, Marcus was offered a job by the GH&H railroad to help rebuild their station in Galveston after the great storm that nearly destroyed the city wiped the old one out. Colby and Emma announced that the first of four children was on the way right after moving into their new house. And, most unfortunately, Mr. Stotley died. He almost had that personal space at home he’d been waiting so long for, but fate’s not without its occasional cruel humor, one has to suppose. They found him out in the field where he had apparently suffered either a heart attack or heat stroke. I imagine he was probably scared at first, but then most likely found his characteristic indifference. At least he finally got his peace and quiet.
Mrs. Stotley wrote to Marcus who was still in Houston at this point, and happily accepted his invitation to bring Candace and move up there. He had described to her all about the city, with its theaters and great churches, and told her about phones that were like telegraphs except people could talk to each other over miles and miles. He told her about the Houston Railway where he was working at the time and how he was being paid a lot of money for the various manufacturing of metal goods he was crafting. Even though he had no formal education, Marcus had the mind of an engineer and the hands of a craftsman. All anyone had to do was show him a picture of a tool or something mechanical in a book, and he could make it. Some things could be ordered from up north, he said, but others had to be handmade and the company paid him a lot to make them. The trains also brought in goods she had never seen before, beautiful things that she could use to decorate her new home with. He promised to build her and Candace their own little house near his and that when she was old enough he would personally see to it that Candace met a respectable man. I think it might have been this last part that seemed so appealing to Mrs. Stotley. She had taken to smothering Candace, intent that her youngest child not make the same mistakes as her other two girls.
Not long after she accepted his invitation Marcus came into town to retrieve her and Candace. The railroad hadn't arrived yet as it was only 1896, so Marcus arrived by wagon. He briefly stopped to visit Annie but couldn't hardly stand to see her with Abram. And Abram, for his part, left them alone to visit. He didn't want to be anywhere near Marcus. His jaw seemed to get a dull ache sometimes when it was really cold and I wouldn’t be surprised if for some reason it seemed to act up on that day that Marcus came by to say farewell to his sister. Marcus tried to talk with Annie and be happy about his first niece, but he couldn't help feeling betrayed by his sister somehow. He couldn't imagine what his sister saw in this man that she would get pregnant by him and marry him. He thought she was too good for him and disappointed that she hadn’t met the expectations Marcus had had for her. He'd write Annie now and then in the years after, but they never actually saw each other again, which is something he’d always lament. Marcus always meant to make it down for a visit, but everything was always so busy for him, especially when he moved his family, including Mrs. Stotley and Candace, to Galveston four years later. And so, except for Emma, Annie's former family, like her childhood, slipped away from her life.
Abram continued working for Mr. Pyle, and since Colby became more or less the manager of the farm at this time, he was blessed with a stability he otherwise would never have known. The truth was he had
it a lot better in life than he had earned, but that didn't stop him from acquiring a huge resentment towards Mama. For the rest of his days my Pap would blame her for stealing his dreams and trapping him in Varner Creek. It took me a long time to learn just how Mama ended up with Pap, but in the end I discovered that things just sort of fell that way. Pap made enough money to buy a house left abandoned by a family a couple of years back and Uncle Colby helped him fix it up. That's where I was born and that's where I was on the day my Pap told me Mama had taken Sarah and left.
Chapter 6
“. . . took your sister and they gone,“ Pap had said.
What? I thought to myself. They left? What does he mean they left? “Where’d they go?” I asked Pap.
He kicked back his glass and emptied the last bit down his throat. “I don’t know. She just left.” I studied Pap carefully, trying to gauge what he was telling me. He didn’t look like a man who was lying through his teeth, but then again a good liar never does, and there was definitely something about Pap that made me think he was cutting this explanation short on purpose. I stood staring at him, from his head to his feet, trying to find a chink in the armor, waiting for him to say something more, something I knew to be a lie. As I looked him over I noticed his boots had mud on them and his hair was a bit wet. “I been out looking for ‘em, but they already gone,” he said, as though in answer to my querying glare at his boots.
“When are they coming back?” I asked.
Pap was getting’ angry, now, “I don’t know! I reckon she might not be comin’ back! Ain‘t you listening, boy?”
I was hearing the words but the meaning still hadn’t settled, but I didn’t want to rile him up worse by asking more questions. So for a few more tense seconds, I just stood in the kitchen staring at Pap trying to figure it out, and he just stared right back, not saying a word.
He finally broke the silence. “I think your Mama left for good. They probably done gone and went to that Galveston city with your Uncle and them, I don’t know. Point is, they’re gone, boy. That’s just all there is to it.”
The Ghosts of Varner Creek Page 8