Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  There was one night way back when she had lain in that bed, Harv there beside her and she had pulled back the sheets and carefully lifted the leg of his pajama pants so that she could see that big scar on his shin, that smooth hairless white crescent that seemed so slick and shiny next to the rest of his leg. It was a mark of sorts, a story that had been told by Emily years ago when Tessy was just a girl. Emily told of that slipped axe and all that blood and Harv back there behind the woodpile trying not to cry. She had never seen Harv cry. She had rubbed her finger over that scar as he stirred in his sleep, head from side to side and then still. Harv’s scar and Harv’s blood and it seemed to be the first time that Harv’s flesh and blood, that Harv, had ever materialized in such a way, the warmth of his skin. The hairs around that scar were gray, on his chest, his head, all of that a part of Harv and a part of her by marriage though she had never felt any claim. All those years and she had never touched the scar, not intentionally, not with the gentleness that she felt that night. She tried to remember if she had ever touched anybody that way, so tenderly and it seemed that she had; it seemed that there had been a moment at least once when her fingers could read it all but she had let herself forget it, worked it clean from her mind. No one had ever read her that way; no one had ever touched her in a way that said they wanted her whole life, wanted to be a part of it, wanted the good and the bad and all that fell between the cracks, all the times they weren’t there and the times they were.

  And she wanted that; she suddenly wanted that as she rubbed the scar, that sensitive skin that though toughened, looked so bare and painful like that second before bleeding starts, that second before the blood can surface and spill over. She had wanted it, wanted that feeling, wanted it all, but even more so that night with Harv as if all those years sharing a house and a bed counted for something big that she had spent her life overlooking. She had leaned over and kissed that scar, ran her tongue down it like a cat and then stretched out beside him, tried to understand how it had come so far.

  She’d hear bits of music in her mind as she still does and try real hard to think of where it came from; sometimes she thinks it must have come from Harv, that he must have hummed or whistled those slow painful melodies that will come to her with her footsteps or the creak of her rocker or the rain on that tin roof. Even now it makes her want to cry when she pictures in her mind Harv behind that woodpile with his leg bleeding. She would cry those nights that she lifted his pants to see that scar; she’d cry for Harv and herself and that pure white scar. That’s what she did every night until Harv died. That’s what replaced the prayers that she had mouthed night after night up to that ceiling like Emily had said she should. But bending there in the light of the window, touching Harv’s scar gave her a sense of peacefulness that those prayers never had. He never woke to see her there, kneeling over his leg, her lips gently brushing the surface of his scar, and she never even planned what she would say should he wake and see her there. She still wonders what she might have said. She thinks, I love you, Harv, and the sounds lilt and bend in her mind like one of those tunes, rising and falling, like Harv’s slow steady breathing on all those nights.

  “Harv, I’m sorry,” she had said the day the doctor came and said that Harv had no business out in those fields anymore, that Harv probably wouldn’t live to see harvest. “I’m sorry,” she said and put her arms around his neck and whispered the words up against his rough stubbled cheek, over and over, I’m sorry, and she felt the tears coming to her eyes, startling her as if she had forgotten there was such a thing and he leaned his head against hers for a moment, pressed in and then shook his head from side to side. “Little late for sorry ain’t it?” he asked. “It’s so late little Messy,” and he pinched her cheek and then turned away from her as she backed into the kitchen where there was a whole sinkful of tomatoes to wash and beans to snap and sheets to wash, and she wanted to go back in there and pull up the leg of his pants, to kneel there in front of him and press her mouth against that scar, and say those words over and over until he said that he knew. She wanted him to know that she had done that for months, that she spent her whole day waiting for him to be asleep so that she could do that, could feel some feeling in her fingers. She wanted to tell him that that’s what kept her sane but she never did. She lay there night after night, wondering which day or which night that breathing would stop. And when that tender green tobacco broke the soil, she knew that she had seen that scar for the last time. So she has to stay busy now, day after day, those words that she never said keeping her company with their strange little tunes that she hears with every turn and scrape of her knife against a bare piece of wood.

  * * *

  Emily stands in the doorway and watches James sitting in that overstuffed chair by the window, Ginny Sue curled on his lap like a little kitten while he reads the Uncle Remus stories. He can’t really read at all, but it doesn’t matter; he knows those stories by heart and Ginny Sue can’t read. She doesn’t know that he’s just looking at the pictures and making up from what he remembers. “Please don’t ever let her know that I can’t read,” he begged Emily and she assured him that she never would. “Though it’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she told him but he just stared down at his feet and shook his head. Now Ginny Sue is asleep there on his chest, her little mouth dropped open and drooling a little and he just stares out the window at that dog pen that David built when he was a boy. Belle is what David called that dog that Lena and Roy gave him. For years he was looking after Belle till that dog was so old and blind that it was almost a sin to expect her to go on living. That pen is near-about fallen down and she keeps telling James they need to get rid of it, that a child could get hurt on that old rusty wire. He won’t have any part of it, won’t let her have it torn down. And he won’t discuss it with her either. Night after night, she lies in that bed, tries to talk about David, tries to make him feel easy about it all, but he only rolls into her like a child and hushes her words with kisses, hard kisses on her lips until she is silent.

  “Whatchoo wanna hear?” he whispers now and Ginny Sue opens her eyes, stretches against him.

  “Tar Baby,” she says and he flips through the book till he finds the right picture. Emily wants so much to go and sit on the arm of that chair and cuddle up with the two of them, to take the book from his hands and read all the words she can recognize, but he needs the child to himself, he needs to feel that childhood squeal vibrating against his chest.

  * * *

  Hannah is nursing Robert, just a tiny thing, when the phone rings. She goes quickly and places him in his bed before answering to her mama’s short breath and sobs. The telegram. As soon as Hannah hears the word, she knows and she turns to look at the small apartment kitchen and it all looks so strange to her, out of focus, like she might be in a stranger’s home instead of hers and Ben’s. She calls Ben to come home and be with the baby until a sitter can arrive, and it seems like hours before he walks through that strange doorway and hands her the keys to the car, tells her that he will get there as soon as he can. And the whole town seems silent as if everybody and everything knows what has happened.

  Tessy is already there, her hair gray and tangled as she stands with a plate of biscuits like she doesn’t know what to do with them. Hannah’s mama’s eyes are red and puffy but she has stopped crying now; now she is worried about Hannah’s dad, the way that he has gone to bed and won’t get up. Hannah tiptoes into the room and draws back the cover to find him curled there, his face in the pillow, and when he looks up at Hannah, his eyes so swollen and red, his hair not even combed, Hannah feels a fear that runs down her spine, seeming to freeze her there, her hand just short of rubbing his face. “He’s gone,” he whispers to Hannah. “He will never be back.”

  It is late when Hannah finally goes home, her dad asleep and her mother getting ready for bed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” she asks but her mama shakes her head, says Robert will be needing his feeding. Ben is waiting up for her, R
obert asleep in his crib and for the first time, she sits down and cries for every second of her life, all of those good times that now will be so hard to look back on. And she goes to get Robert only to find him sleeping so peacefully and she shakes his little leg until he wakes so that she can nurse him. Ben sits in the dark of the bedroom with her, off to the side, the chair at the desk, while Robert nuzzles and roots until he finds her breast, and all she can think about over and over is the time that she saw David and Mary Harper down by the river. They were leaning against the trunk of a tree and drinking moonshine out of Mary’s shoe. David lifted that shoe to his mouth and the two of them laughed and hugged, their bodies pressed close together in the way that only lovers know. And now the warmth of this tiny body pressing and sucking her breast is not enough for her. Now, more than she ever has, she wants Ben. She wants to feel his body cover and press against her; she wants to close her eyes and move against him, to feel every motion, and then to open her eyes and see that he is still there.

  * * *

  When Madge gets to the oak tree midway down the road, she starts running as fast as she can, her heart beating so fast and it feels good just to get out and run. “I’m just going for a walk,” she had told her mama and her mama didn’t care. Her mama wouldn’t notice if Madge took off and never came back. She gets to the end of the road, there at the crossroads where that long dusty road stretches into town, and stops, catches her breath, smooths the skirt of her dress. She waits and she hears his car coming before she sees the cloud of dust when he turns the corner, so good-looking, his blonde hair brushed back high off of his forehead.

  “Can I give you a lift?” he asks, smiles at her, and she laughs, climbs in beside him and he pulls her over closer, his arm around her shoulder making her feel so small and protected. “What have you been doing all day?” he asks and it makes her feel so warm inside. She could be toting a sack of potatoes on her back that she had spent the whole day digging and he would still be interested in hearing about it. “Find a man that’s interested in you and not what you can give him,” her mama had said on one of those rare times that she talked. She has found someone, now, and for the first time in her life, Madge is happy. “I can’t stand being away from you, Raymond,” she says. “I know I haven’t known you long but I feel that way, I do.”

  “You know all you’ll ever need to know,” he says and kisses her cheek. “This is me and I want to spend the rest of my life loving you.”

  * * *

  Tessy Pearson would have seven children if she hadn’t miscarried those two times. Now she’s got five and one on the way, but this new one isn’t going to make it, doesn’t have a chance. She doesn’t call out for a doctor or Harv or anybody else; she just lies there in that big iron bed, her knees pulled up to her chest and waits for it to be over. She can hear leaves rustling and limbs brushing against the tin roof, wood being chopped and tossed on that pile outside the kitchen door. She knows Harv isn’t chopping; he has Tom Parker doing it because it is slow and sporadic, unlike the steady mechanical chop of Harv. She knows Harv probably never chops a piece of wood that he doesn’t think about that accident he had. He doesn’t talk about that accident, never has, but Tessy can imagine it all from what Emily has said. Now she imagines the axe slipping from Tom Parker’s hand, his thin pale face twisted in pain; his shoulder blades so sharp they look like they could pierce his skin as he hunches forward, his leg covered in blood.

  She lifts herself from the bed, pulls the sheet out from under her and removes her gown. “Tom Parker!” she raps on the window and he puts down the axe. It makes her hurt to look at that child, that wood all ragged and splintered in a pile around him. “Come wait outside my door,” she calls. “I need you a minute.” She drops the curtains and puts on a clean nightgown, bundles up all that other and puts it in a burlap bag that she uses to tote laundry to the river. “Come in, son,” she calls and gets back in the bed, pulls the quilt around her. Her fingers are icy cold against her thin ribs and she breathes a sigh of relief when she runs her hand over her empty abdomen. “Take this sack to the river.”

  “It’s freezing cold, Mama,” he says. “I can’t wash those clothes.”

  “I said take it to the river.” She sits up and pulls the quilt closer. “Sink it.” She waits for him to answer but he only stares back at her, his dull brown eyes so much like Harv’s she can’t bear to look. “That’s right,” she says. “Just like the doctor done last time.”

  “Is it dead?” he asks, hands thrust in his pockets.

  “It ain’t nothing. Never was living so it can’t be dead.”

  “Want me to tell Daddy?” he asks when she motions again for him to come take the bag.

  “I’ll tell him directly,” she says, takes his warm hand into hers and places the end of the bag there, folds his fingers around it. “Don’t look like that,” she says. “It wasn’t meant to be.” And she watches him tiptoe from the room and pull the door to behind him. She gets down under the covers and tries to say a prayer for whatever was there in that bag. She tries to sleep but the sound of chopping goes right on and on in her head.

  She gets herself up and dresses, warm stockings and a big thick sweater, and she goes out and starts raking leaves up into huge piles around the pecan trees, the whole time sifting through and picking up nuts, filling the pockets of her dress. The light is so strange today, gray and misty, like it might be close to nighttime though it isn’t even noon. It might as well be any time and that’s what she thinks while she rakes back and forth in long straight strokes while the wind lifts and scatters the neat piles.

  “Doctor says you’re to stay bedded,” Harv says. He is standing over by the woodpile and she hadn’t even noticed. She bends and sifts through the pile of leaves at her feet. “You don’t want to lose another.”

  “Done lost it,” she says, never stopping, reaching and sifting. “I already sent Tom Parker to the river with it.”

  “What was it?” Harv asks and steps closer, his big hands hanging clumsily like they don’t even belong to him.

  “It was nothing yet,” she says and squeezes two of the nuts together between her palms. “I didn’t even look at it.” She picks some of the meat from the shell and puts it in her mouth. “It was nothing.”

  “You been doing too much,” he says. “Next time you’re gonna stay in the bed like you’re supposed to if I have to get me a colored woman to come here and work.”

  “There ain’t gonna be a next time,” she says. “It ain’t meant for me to have another.” She concentrates on picking the bits of meat from the shell.

  “You wouldn’t get that way if it weren’t meant to be.” He takes that nut from her hand and sails it way up high over the woodpile where it hits and bounces into the leaves.

  “I wouldn’t get that way if . . .” Tessy stops herself and goes back to sifting. “Just let me be.” She can hear him now, walking away, up the steps and when the door slams, she bundles up her pile of pecans in the bottom of her dress and goes to sit in the barn to crack and pick them.

  She is still sitting there late afternoon when Emily eases open that heavy wooden door and lets the gray cold light come through. “It’s getting dark, Tessy,” Emily whispers. “And it’s getting cold. Me and James stopped by to visit a little.”

  “I reckon Harv told you,” she says and looks up, those green eyes of Emily’s just as calm and steady as ever. “I’ll send you home some pecans. I got this whole pile right here.”

  “I’m sorry, Tessy.”

  “Most of them ain’t even broke. I like to put the whole ones on top of a cake to make a little picture.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Emily sits there in the straw at Tessy’s feet, that old skinny cow wanting to nuzzle Emily’s neck.

  “I ain’t gonna do it again,” she says. “I ain’t. I’d rather die.”

  “Don’t say things like that,” Emily whispers. “You don’t mean it.”

  “Me and you are the same age,�
�� Tessy says and toys with the pecans in her lap. “You are just now carrying your first and I have got five living and three that never was. Now that’s a plenty. My Tom Parker is nine years old and can chop wood like a man.”

  “He’s a fine son,” Emily says. “Looks like he’s grown a foot.”

  “They all have,” she says. “They eat and grow and outgrow clothes faster than I can make them.” Tessy leans forward and whispers like a child, her eyes clear and young though her hands are as rough as any old farm wife. “When I was fifteen, I was having a baby and your mama was making you a dress to wear to a picnic social, and when I was twenty I was having another baby while you were getting ready for James to come home from the war. Lena was out in the yard playing games and honest to God there was times that I wanted nothing better than to take off my shoes and run through some cornfield with some fool dog. Harv didn’t see me that way, though; nobody saw me the way that they saw you and Lena and there I had all those dreams that I’d marry Harv like my daddy said and that it would be like I was one of you, that I’d have sisters and a mama. Harv said he’d take me away from that life I was living with my daddy out in Slade Township and he brought me to a life that’s worse. I haven’t come to love him like my daddy said I would and I still don’t feel like I’ve got a mama.”