Stephen collapsed into a couch. He felt drained, exhausted simply from having watched the fight for air. He saw the nurses roll the now unconscious man from the room, and knew they would put him to bed. He stared through the open doorway long after they had passed from his view and he was left alone. If the very mention of Janson Sanders’s name had done this to his grandfather, Stephen had little doubt what it would do to the old man if he were to learn that Stephen had an interest in Sanders’s granddaughter. He knew—for his grandfather’s sake if for no other reason—that he should stay as far away from the girl as he possibly could.
But he could not stop himself.
He was late in calling her house that night, and, when he did, an old man answered the phone.
“May I speak to Joanna, please?” Stephen asked, clenching his teeth tightly together until his jaws ached, having to fight the urge to tell the man who he was, for he knew the man on the other end of the line had to be Janson Sanders.
“Hold on,” and the phone was covered as the man called Joanna’s name. What am I doing? Stephen asked himself.
Then he heard her voice.
And he knew he was only doing what he had to do.
Summer had brought the worst drought within the memory of most everyone in Eason County. The red earth stood parched and dry, the corn stunted. The well was low, but Joanna knew they were better off than those dependent on city water in the surrounding towns. Most water systems were pitiably low, and water restrictions were in effect. Fines were being charged those caught washing cars or watering lawns or gardens. The local car washes bore signs on their aluminum fronts that said: “Will reopen when drought is over,” or “Out of Water,” or “No Wash, No Water.” Gardens withered, lawns turned brown, and new cars sat dust-covered on car lots, but it was the county farmers who were suffering worst.
The combination of heat and no rain had left fields dry and crops dying. There was little grass in pastures for cattle to graze, and truck and train loads of hay were being sent south by Northern farmers who heard news reports of the drought that was plaguing the Southeast.
It was too little too late. Cattle were being sent to slaughter early to reduce the cost of feeding them, and market prices had dropped. Crop yields were non-existent. Farmers were hurting not just in Eason County, but all through the South.
Things had been bad on the Sanders place before, but the drought made them far worse. There had been late payments before, even missed payments, but they had managed to hold on. Now they had to buy feed for the cattle, and profit was drying up in the fields. They hauled water from the creek to the fields, until even the creek dried up. There was nothing that any man or woman could do when it seemed that God Himself had turned against them.
To Joanna, Stephen Dawes soon became a respite from her days. Daytime was work on the land, and fighting the drought, and worry over money—but late evenings, once Katie was down for the night, quickly became time she could spend with Stephen, time she could be nothing more than a woman interested in a man, without the worries of the day to intrude between them. When they were together she did not have to think; she could just simply be. She did not have to talk about her problems and worries, for she knew he did not want to know, and she knew as well that he would never understand. She had seen his truck; she had seen the expensive clothes, and his home. Stephen had money. He could have anything he wanted. He would never understand what she was going through.
And she did not want to tell him.
She did invite him to supper with her family, for she felt it was something she should do, but was relieved when he declined—“I’m not good with people,” he told her, and she accepted it as truth.
The honest fact was that she did not want him to see the little six-room house, the decades-old furniture, the bills lying on the hall table, bills that there was no money to pay. It was not that she was ashamed—she was not ashamed, she told herself—it was just that the life he had known was so different from her own.
He came to the house to pick her up the first few times they went out, and each of those times Joanna met him at his truck without even giving him an opportunity to open his door, to which both her parents and grandparents objected loudly. Later, after she had been to his house for a late dinner one night, she often met him there, or at a neutral location, when they were to go out. He suggested she bring Katie sometime for lunch, but she declined; she did not want her daughter becoming accustomed to him until Joanna knew where she stood with him. She was becoming very attracted to Stephen Dawes, and she knew it. She also knew there was very little chance of a future with him. Men like Stephen Dawes did not fall in love with women like her. There was also the knowledge that he had never really had a family from the time he was five years old. He did not know what having a family meant. She had made a horrible mistake in her choice of Dwight. She had no intention of making that kind of mistake in a man ever again.
Joanna drove to Stephen’s house for a late supper one evening that fall. She had only picked politely at the meal she shared with Katie and the family, for Stephen had told her to come hungry that night.
“You’re going to make me fat,” she had told him on more than one occasion when they planned a late meal together to follow the one she would have with her daughter, “making me eat two suppers in one night.”
“I think we can find a way for you burn it off,” he would suggest each time, grinning down at her. He would stand with his arms looped around her waist, so tall that her head tucked neatly under his chin when he held her against him. “I’m still waiting for that night of wild sex.”
“And you’ll keep waiting, Mr. Dawes,” she always told him, though the same thought was increasingly on her mind. She knew there had to be more to sex than what she had known with Dwight; the encounters with him had been more frustrating than anything else. She had an inkling that Stephen could be very different.
She sat in the den that night as he put the finishing touches on the supper they would eat together. He would no longer allow her into the kitchen, not after the first night when she tried to help, which had done nothing but create an argument between the two of them over the ingredients of corn bread.
“It’s corn-bread not cake,” she had instructed, aghast that he dumped sugar into the mixture.
“That’s how you’re supposed to make it.”
“No, it’s not supposed to be sweet—”
“Yes, it is—”
“You cook like a Yankee,” she told him at last, shaking her head with disgust, which had only gotten her banished from the kitchen.
That suited her just as well. He usually had supper ready by the time she arrived, and, if he did not, she just spent the time setting the dining room table or looking through his collection of record albums. His taste in music was far different from hers, and it was amusing to listen to the things he apparently preferred to listen to, which were far different from anything she owned. Tonight she had exhausted her interest in the albums and was browsing through several shelves of books—horror novels by Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and Peter Straub, among others, also far different from her own tastes. Even the concept of some of the books made her skin crawl, and she had just sat back down on the couch with one of them when he entered the den from the kitchen.
“I don’t see how you can sleep after reading these things,” she told him, closing the book to set it on the coffeetable. She hugged her arms for warmth as she stared down at the cover. It was about a plague wiping out most of the population of the earth, which was not the most appealing reading material just before sitting down to supper.
“That’s one of my favorites, actually,” he told her, picking the book up as he sat down beside her. “It’s about the struggle of good and evil. It has all these Biblical overtones, which really aren’t my thing, but it’s good.” He put it into her hands. “Give it a chance; you’ll like it.”
“Well—” she looked at him speculatively, but accepted the book. “We’ll see.”
Supper went smoothly—although he had sugared the cornbread again. He made it almost every time they had supper together, just, she believed, to see if she would say something about it—which she didn’t. She also didn’t eat the cornbread after the first tentative, trial bite.
She helped him do the dishes later, during which he broke a glass, cutting his thumb in the process. He let her bandage it only after a fuss.
“You’re worse than a three-year-old,” she told him, making him hold still only by pinning the injured hand between her knees as she applied antiseptic and a Band-aid. He was looking at her in a way that did not remind her in the slightest of any child when she lifted her eyes to his a moment later. Then he slipped his hand to the back of her neck to loosen the clamp holding her hair back, running his fingers through it for a moment before drawing it down over her shoulders. When he kissed her, she leaned into him, and, when he drew her to her feet later to lead her toward the bedroom, she did not object in the slightest.
Joanna lay in his arms afterward, amazed at the feel of his chest hair now beneath her fingers, for Dwight had had no chest hair at all—Stephen was very different, she told herself, very different in many ways—
And, oh, yes, she had been missing a lot.
She kissed his chest, feeling his fingers now draw her hair back from her face so he could see her better when she looked up at him—she loved him, she realized. She started to say something, to tell him what she felt, but pressed her lips to his chest again instead.
“I could get used to this,” he said, smiling at her when she brought her eyes to his again.
“So could I.” She was smiling as well, thinking—yes, she could get used to a very many things, as she ran her fingers again over his chest.
But he was suddenly pressing her back, taking her by the shoulders, moving so that he leaned over her. There was a seriousness in his expression as he met her eyes.
“I need to tell you—” he began, but then he fell silent. He stared at her, and there seemed to be a struggle inside of him. She smiled and reached up to touch his cheek, telling herself that she understood—he loved her; she could see it in his eyes. He did not have to say anything.
“I love you,” she said at last, though she had not known she would say the words until they passed her lips. He opened his mouth, but not a word came out. He stared at her, and then she drew his mouth to hers, in a kiss that lingered.
Later she slept in his arms, waking hours later in the middle of the night. “I’ve got to go,” she told him, sitting up as she caught sight of the clock on the table beside the bed. It had been his hands that had awakened her, and he pressed her back now. “It’s the middle of the night,” she protested. “My folks would never understand—”
“To hell with your folks,” he told her, just before he drew her mouth to his. She started to protest again, but the insistence of his lips, and the warmth of his body, drove the words from her mind.
24
On an afternoon several weeks later, Stephen sat, feeling useless, in the bank president’s office as he listened to his grandfather and the bank president discuss business. His grandfather sat beside him in his wheelchair, wearing an expensively tailored suit and a sour look as he gave the banker hell, asking questions, probing, unbelieving of anything that was told him—as usual.
Stephen had no idea why he had been ordered here. The driver and male nurse who had ridden along were waiting in the van outside, but Stephen felt he was of little more use in this meeting than the driver would have been. He was mostly being ignored as the two men talked, and had begun to toy with an antique-looking paperweight from the desktop, which seemed to annoy the banker, though that did not make Stephen put the paperweight down. He wondered if he were here simply to be displayed—the next Eason in the line, Buddy Eason’s prize possession—but there were other matters on his mind today beyond his grandfather’s current motives. There was Joanna.
He had known that he would have to tell her sooner or later that his grandfather was Buddy Eason, but there had never been a time that seemed right. He had thought it might be easier if they became lovers, for that would be something of a commitment between them. And he knew now that she was in love with him—but that had made it only worse. Now he knew he had remained silent too long. He was almost certain now that she would turn away when she learned the truth—she was a Sanders. That knowledge still did not sit well with him, but he loved her anyway. He had not been able to speak those three words to her, had never spoken them to any woman, and he could not imagine himself saying them to Joanna—but he did love her, and he was afraid now that he would lose her. He had to tell her about his grandfather, and he had to tell her tonight. He had come to that decision in the sleepless hours after she had left him the previous night to return to her home and her Sanders land.
Stephen listened for a moment to the banker discussing some tax shelter plan, to his grandfather interrupting rudely again and again. He tried to follow what they were saying, not to think about—
Last night had started out as many of their evenings together started. He had dinner ready for them—fried chicken breasts, rolls, and potato wedges from the Super Chick in Pine, which he knew she loved, though he had yet to understand what charmed her so about the greasy mess.
He intended that night to suggest again that she bring her daughter along early some afternoon, so they could grill out on the back deck and maybe watch a movie in the den, and the notion of that homey time with the three of them together had him thinking about what it could be like if he and Joanna could have a future together—but Joanna was silent and distant as they ate, and later, after they dimmed the living room lights and while he was holding her, he could tell she was thinking of something far different from where she was and what he was doing.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
They had never talked of troubles or problems in their hours together, for those hours were so few and far between they seemed suitable only for happy things, so he was surprised when she said, “We’ve lost our farm. We got a foreclosure notice a few days ago,” she said, sitting back against the sofa cushions, now out of his arms.
“Foreclosure? Why didn’t you tell me things were like that? I could have—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There’s nothing you could have done.”
“There might have been. I could have—”
“No.” The finality of the word left nothing for him to do or say. She rose from the couch and crossed the room to stand staring out the living room window into the darkness, her back to him. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. It’s over. The farm’s gone.”
Stephen stared at her, at the straight back, the lifted head—she had known for days, and had not told him. She would have known it was coming for months, and she had kept it to herself. He knew what the place meant to her. If she had told him earlier, he could have loaned her enough to keep the place going for a time, could possibly have arranged an extension on the amount they owed.
Finally, he said, “I’m sorry,” knowing the words were terribly inadequate.
He started to rise to go to her, but then her quiet voice froze him onto the couch. “Goddamn the Easons,” she said. “Goddamn every last one of them.”
Finally he forced his mind to work, and the words to come. “What did you say?” he asked, surprised at how calm his voice sounded. No, she did not know—it was something more.
She turned to look at him, her arms crossed before her chest, as if she did not know what else to do with them. “Oh, I know they’re not behind this now. We did this on our own—the economy, the drought—there was no way we could make it. And we’re not the only ones. Lots of farms have been lost in recent years. But, everything else they’ve done to my family; if it had not been f
or them down through the years, we might never have gotten to this point. They destroyed equipment years ago, destroyed animals, parts of the crop several times—”
“I’m sure the Easons couldn’t have done anything like that. They’re—” He did not know what he had been about to say, just that he was going to defend his family from some slander she had been told by her grandfather and her father, but he had no chance.
“How can you defend them?” she demanded, anger flashing across her features. “That son-of-a-bitch Buddy Eason tried to murder my grandfather more than once! He had my father beaten, and set fire to my grandfather’s crop, and our house! My great-grandfather died fighting a fire in his cotton crop that was set by one of the Easons. How can you—! You don’t know them.”
He sat in dumbfounded silence. Her chest, beneath the white cotton blouse, rose and fell in angry silence as she met his gaze. He had never seen her like this, had never heard anyone say anything like this, and he knew it was a lie. Stephen was an Eason by blood, and she was—
Suddenly her face softened and she came toward him. “I’m sorry. I know you haven’t been in the county for that long. You don’t know all that’s happened. Most of it even happened before I was born. You don’t know what the Easons are like.” She sat down beside him and took both his hands in hers, looking up at him with gentleness in her eyes. “I had no right to yell at you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” he said after a moment, turning his face away. He wanted to tell her that he was an Eason in the eyes of so many people in the county, and in the eyes of his grandfather, that same Buddy Eason she cursed so. He wanted to tell her that it was she who did not know. He wanted to tell her that she should hear all the things his grandfather had to say about her family—the truth for once in her life—but he could not. Not now. Not like this.
There Is a River Page 26