There Is a River

by Charlotte Miller

  His children seemed so much older, older than the passage of a year should have allowed them. Catherine, fifteen and looking so much like her mother, was not much younger than Elise had been when he married her. Elise had seemed a woman to him then, but Catherine was still his little girl. In some ways he could now understand why Elise’s father had tried to kill him those many years before.

  Judith, still his baby, just turning thirteen years old, all elbows and knees, but becoming a young woman. She had helped her mother prepare supper, and had set the table while Catherine spent the time talking about a picture show and some soon-to-be GI she thought looked like the singer, Frank Sinatra. Janson found himself admiring how much his youngest daughter had grown up, while at the same time wishing the GI shits on Sinatra’s look-alike once he got overseas.

  Both girls had fussed over him in their own ways, had worried about his wounds, and had been his little girls again even for just a time—but Henry seemed almost a man now. At sixteen and a half, he was almost as tall as his father, and his voice had deepened remarkably in the time Janson had been gone. He had shaken Janson’s hand when he had gotten in from school, and had called him “sir” as if he were a stranger now in his own home. Catherine and Judith had each given him a hug and a kiss on the cheek, had called him “Pa,” and had been obviously happy to have him home. Even Stan had put his one good arm around his shoulders and welcomed him back—but Henry had shook his hand.

  “Hello, sir,” his son had said.

  Hello, sir—

  That bothered him more than he was willing to say.

  Elise had perhaps changed most of all. It was not just the bare legs beneath her skirt, or the knowledge that she had been working in the mill for the Easons, or even the thought of the time they had been apart—it was the way she had met everyone’s eyes at the depot, the way she had told the man in the taxicab to drive them home, something in her very bearing.

  She came into the bedroom and closed the door, then turned back to look at him, color rising to her cheeks a moment after she met his eyes—it had been so long since they had been alone together, at night, here in this room. It struck him suddenly that this was what he had thought of on so many nights overseas, what he had wanted to come home to: Elise, and this bed, and a night when the rest of the world could go away.

  She hesitated at the door, then crossed the room to sit beside him on the bed, reaching out to take his hand in hers and intertwine her fingers with his. “I’m afraid you’ll disappear if I close my eyes,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll wake up and find out it’s all a dream and you’ll still be gone—”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he said, smiling at her. He reached up and brushed the hair back from her eyes, then leaned to kiss her, but she seemed to hesitate and so he stopped and looked at her for a moment. Her blue eyes were moving over his as if she were looking for something.

  “Janson, I have to know. You were gone so long—it won’t matter, but I have to know.”

  “Know what?” he asked, wanting to touch her, but feeling almost as awkward as the first time they had been together those years before.

  “I know how you are, and I can accept it if you did, but I have to know. While you were gone, did you—” for a moment she hesitated, “were you—” She seemed unable to finish.

  For a moment he did not understand, then comprehension suddenly hit him. He looked at her with surprise, not wanting to believe she had even asked. The color rose to her cheeks again, but she did not look away. “You think I had another woman while I was gone?” he demanded, releasing her hand and moving away from her slightly where they sat on the bed. His hip hurt, but he did not care.

  “Did you?” she asked, her eyes never leaving his.

  Anger filled him. How could she not trust him after all the years they had been together? How could she think he would be with another woman just because she wasn’t there? He had known GI’s who had gone with women overseas, women who had no idea there was a wife and a family back home, but he never had. There had been buddies who had tried to introduce him to women, buddies who had told him his wife would never know—and he had never once been tempted.

  “Were you with another man while I was gone?” he asked her, and then watched the rage immediately fill her.

  “How dare you—you know I would never—” He thought for a moment she would slap him, but he sat still and waited until she took a breath.

  “What’s th’ difference in me askin’ you an’ you askin’ me?” he demanded. “You think I’m more likely t’ cheat on you than you on me? I ain’t been with nobody but you in all these years, not since th’ day I first saw you; you ought t’ know that just as good as I know you ain’t never been with no other man but me. I cain’t believe you’d even ask me, that all th’ time I’ve been gone you ain’t trusted me.”

  “It’s not that. It’s—”

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, and then lowered her eyes. “It’s just been so long. I know you haven’t. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  “I may not be much, but, whatever I am, it belongs t’ you,” he said after a moment. “I ain’t never give you no reason t’ doubt that.”

  She nodded her head, still not raising her eyes. “It’s just—I’ve just missed you so much, and it’s been so long. I—”

  “I’ve missed bein’ with you, too.” He looked at her for a long moment. At last she raised her eyes to meet his, then after a time looked down again, her hand reaching out to touch his thigh lightly.

  “Is it bad?” she asked, her eyes coming to his again. “Does it hurt?”

  “It aches. It don’t really hurt too much no more.” He watched her for a moment, her hair moving down to cover her face partially as she looked to where her hand moved along his thigh and up to his side. “Does it matter to you?” he asked her.

  “What?” She looked up, brushing her hair back from her eyes.

  “This,” he said, nodding with his head down toward his body, and then again toward the cane that rested against the iron headboard of the bed. “That I came home to you like this?”

  “You came home to me. That’s what matters.”

  “But, like this—”

  “No.” She moved closer, then stretched up to kiss him, her hand moving up a moment later to touch his face as she looked at him.

  “But, you don’t know yet how you’ll feel.”

  “About what?”

  “About having a cripple for a husband—I don’t know if I’ll have to use the cane for the rest of my life, but—”

  “No—” Her fingers came to rest over his lips, silencing his words, and then moved away again. “That doesn’t matter.” She was touching him now, not lightly, and not in pity. “I want to be with you—is that okay; I mean, can we? Are you healed well enough yet?”

  He didn’t have to answer. She knew. After a moment he reached out to turn off the light, but she stopped him, her hand coming to rest on his arm.

  “No, leave it on,” she said, and, after a time, Janson felt that he had truly come home.

  He awoke hours later in the midst of a dream, the images following him up from sleep and making him think for a moment that he was back there again, back lying in a hole with half of a world between him and where his life should be.

  Then he felt Elise against him, and heard her voice, almost a whisper, breathed against his shoulder. “Janson, are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Just a bad dream,” he said quietly in the chilled room.

  He felt her nod in the darkness, then felt her hand on his chest, her lips touch the skin just below his right ear. “Promise you won’t leave me again,” she said very softly, as she tugged the quilts closer against them.

  He lay thinking of the nights he had lain in darkness and dreamed her there, of her breath on
his skin.

  Of being home.

  If this was a dream now, he hoped never to wake up.

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere,” he said, his lips against her hair. “I’ll be here ’til th’ day I die.”

  11

  There was a painful silence between them the next morning as Elise dressed for work. Henry and the girls were still asleep, though breakfast waited for them warm in the kitchen so they could eat before school, and Stan was working the second part of a double. Janson and Elise were alone in the front room, Elise standing only the space of half the floor away as she ironed the cotton dress she would wear to the mill, but Janson felt distanced from her. They had not been apart since he had gotten home, for he had followed her to the kitchen when she prepared breakfast, and even asked her to help him down the steps that led from the rear porch and into the yard when he had to go to the outhouse, but now morning had come and she would be leaving for her shift in the mill. Janson would be alone in the house once the children left for school, alone and staying here, for his wounds and the need for the walking cane made both the front and rear steps seem an impossibility to him.

  They had spent the night touching, talking. They had slept at last only for him to wake this morning to find her staring at him in the darkness. They had talked about how the children had changed, how Henry would soon be a man, and Catherine too interested in this boy she liked, and Judith becoming quite a young lady. They had talked of the years they had spent together, the struggle, during the Depression and even before, and the dreams. They talked of the months they had been apart, the loneliness, the worry—she had not asked about the fighting, about what it had been like over there, or even of the night he had been wounded, and he had found that he was glad.

  He would tell her one day, but not yet. Now he just wanted to be home.

  They had talked about how the town had changed, the people, about the privations on the homefront of a people at war—and most of all they had talked of what they would do after the war.

  She dealt him a shock when she told him she had put their money in the bank—all that hope, all that work, all those dreams, and she had put it in a bank just as if that was not the very way they lost it back in 1930. The banks might be open again now, might have been open since not long after FDR took office back in ’33, and there might not have been any talk of them going under since that time, but Janson Sanders would never trust a bank again. One had locked its doors and never given him what was rightfully his—he would never let that happen again.

  “Did you forget what happened before?” he had asked her, having been for a moment almost too surprised to speak. “We lost everythin’ when th’ bank collapsed back then!”

  “The banks aren’t going to fail again, Janson.”

  “You don’t know that! Elise, you could ’a lost everythin’!”

  But she had only lifted her chin and stared at him directly in the darkness. “Do you think I’d take a chance if I thought that could happen again? Someone could have stolen the money with it here in the house. Having it in the bank is safer than leaving it here where someone could come in while we’re gone and take it—besides, it’s insured by the government, and if FDR says it’s safe, then you know it’s safe.”

  “But—” he had begun, but had realized that he could not argue with her. The money had been in the bank for months now, and she said that it was still there—he would just feel safer if it was where he could see it, could count it. Besides, he was home now and he could take it out any time he wanted and put it some place safer until the war was over, and then they could do what they had planned to do for so long—it was so much money, more than they had ever saved before.

  He had been surprised when she showed him the numbers in the bankbook, Elise getting up during the night and turning on the electric lights so she could fetch it from a drawer across the room. He stared at the numbers for a long time, then got her to say them over to him again just in case he was wrong—it was a fortune in his eyes, and it would buy for them something that was worth more than any amount of money he could ever own. It would buy his land. It would buy a dream, and the life he had promised Elise for so long.

  Janson sat on the side of the bed, watching as Elise unbuttoned the dress and slipped it on, knowing it had to be still warm to her skin from the iron. The savings had grown in the time he had been gone. He knew very well how much had been there when he left, and, though Elise had only told him that she had managed to stay out of it in the months he had been away, he knew she had added to it as well. Somehow that did not seem right, Elise’s money, money she had worked for, Elise Whitley working in a cotton mill—what have I brought you to? he thought, staring at her as she buttoned the dress. He had intended to make her quit the mill the minute he got home, had fully well intended to make her do it when he had first gotten in the day before, but now he could not make himself bring up the subject.

  She had told him she was glad to be doing something in the war effort, that it felt good knowing that something she was doing could help to win the war, just as her victory garden and her collecting scrap and her cup of bacon grease by the stove was helping—there was nothing he could do now, he had thought. He had no scrap to collect or bacon grease to keep by, and gardening was beyond him for the moment. The mill had no use for him now, no use for a man who was part cripple, he had told himself, returning “war hero” or not, as Judith had called him. No one needed him—not even Elise.

  He had come home, but he had come home only to be one more person for Elise to have to look after and fret over. Her working had been bad enough. Her working for the Easons, supporting him now, pulling a shift down running a drawing machine, and him unable to do the work instead and make her stay home—he wished he had not seen this day.

  He kept thinking about how she had been when he first met her: petted, spoiled, sixteen years old and living in her father’s grand house, a girl with fancy clothes and motor cars and all the money in the world—and she was going today to work in a cotton mill, working to bring home money to support a husband trapped in the three rooms of a mill house, a man unsure as to whether he could even manage the front steps to reach the yard without falling.

  He clenched his hand over the crook of the walking cane as it rested against his thigh, clenched it until the veins bulged out on the back of his hand and his knuckles turned white—he had never wanted her to work. It was not a woman’s place to work, not if she had a man to look after her—but he could not look after her. He could not even look after his own children. He could sit home and make baskets, or bottom chairs, and get Henry to peddle them door-to-door—but it would be Elise who would make the wage that would put food on their table.

  She was sitting in a chair before the dresser now, a drawer open beside her which she was looking through as if she were searching for something. She was talking as she moved things about in the drawer, but he could not make himself listen to her. He pushed himself to his feet instead, leaning heavily on the walking stick because of the ache in his hip, until he had straightened fully, then he made his way to the dresser, the sound the cane made on the floor loud to his ears. The dull ache in his hip became pain as he crossed the room.

  He stood behind her, placing his free hand on her shoulder as he looked down at her reflection in the mirror. Elise smiled as her eyes rose to meet his in the glass, then she reached up to place her hand over his.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” she said, still smiling, her hand squeezing his.

  Her skin was warm where it touched him, her shoulder rounded beneath his hand, bringing back memories of the night—then his eyes caught the reflection of his own body behind her, of how he stood now with his weight all on one leg, of the cane gripped tightly in his hand, the cane he leaned on even now heavily for support.

  Janson turned his eyes away, not returning her smile. She squeezed his hand again, but said nothing more.
Janson moved away to slowly cross the room until he stood with his back to her, his eyes on the photograph of himself she had on the table by the bed. After a moment her voice resumed, talking of the children, but Janson found himself unable to listen. He stared down at his image, knowing she was talking just to fill the minutes until the time came when she would have to leave. He kept telling himself that it would only be like this until he could go back to work, kept telling himself that it would not be that long, kept telling himself that soon he would be rid of the cane and back to the mill and Elise could come home.

  He turned and looked at her, her back to him as she opened another drawer—she was not so far away, he told himself. A baby could walk that distance, and he could certainly do it without the cane. The Army doctors had told him to take it easy, not to push his recovery, and that he might re-injure the hip, but it was not so great a distance. A few steps today, a few more tomorrow, and he would be back to the mill sooner than anyone expected. All he would have to do was work at it, to make himself take those steps each day, and to do it without the security of the cane that was supporting him even now.

  Janson moved closer to the table to brace his hand against it, then leaned the walking stick against the wall alongside the headboard of the bed. For a moment he stood unsure, but then he looked again at Elise still sitting with her back to him, and he knew he could do it. So few steps and he would be able to touch her; so few steps and she would be in his arms.

  She was talking lightly of the children, telling him how the girls had learned to cook over the past year. Catherine had almost set the kitchen ablaze four different times with a grease fire, until Henry had sworn he would never allow his sister near a stove again, but Janson was barely listening to her—only a few steps, he told himself. Only a few steps and he could stand beside her. A baby not even a year old could walk that distance. Only a few steps.

  He turned loose of the table, gritting his teeth at the pain that shot through his hip and leg—the cane had been safety, assurance that he would not fall, something to counter-balance his weight so that it would not hurt so much to stand.