Jarrettsville

by Cornelia Nixon

  He shook his head. “The whole world’s like that if you stare at it.” He pointed to a shelf of rock where willows hung. “See that shadow there? There’s a trout in there the size of a collie, been there since I was a boy. Too smart to get caught. I tried everything, worms, night crawlers, fancy tied flies. Almost caught it with a peanut-butter sandwich once.”

  I laughed, and his brow seemed to clear. He touched the sleeve of Tim’s jacket. “How did you end up with this? It must be too warm.”

  “My dress was wet. I needed something to cover up and make me decent.” Impulsively I shrugged the jacket off. Underneath the bodice was still damp, but it was a relief to feel the air.

  He laughed quietly. “You look quite decent now.” He took the jacket from me and examined it. “Not a bad garment, really.”

  “It’s seen better days. It was my father’s. I sewed these elbow patches on myself.”

  He nodded quietly, as if aware of my father’s death. He tied the jacket sleeves around his waist to carry it for me. “Here, I’ll show you something else.”

  He led me along a path to a steep rock overhung with vines and parted them to show me marks etched in the rock. Some were circles crosshatched like Chinese embroidery, others like a child’s drawing of men, but with blank faces and no eyes. I had been to Painted Rocks beside the Susquehanna, where people had scrawled their names next to Indian petroglyphs.

  But these looked older, lonelier, stranger. The people who had carved them evidently meant to give them no eyes, just blank faces turned up to the sky. I shivered in my damp dress.

  “Here, let’s get you in the sun again. I had a fort up here, and I’ve never showed it to anyone. You will be the first.”

  He gave me a boost to climb the steep side of the rock, and I felt his unexpected wiry strength. When we reached the sunny top, I sat down against the warm rock, reassured.

  He took a chink out of a crevice and peered inside. “The boys around here must be fast asleep. There’s still some arrowheads I left in here. It must be twenty years ago now.”

  He handed one to me, cool from the inside of the rock, and sat down next to me.

  I felt a giddy rush with him so close and tried to hide it, chattering.

  “I had a fort, too, not like this. A tree fort, in a grove of white pines on a hill across the road from us. I used to climb up there to get away from home. My thinking place, I called it when my mother asked me where I went. That’s what I did there. Did you think here?”

  He laughed quietly. “Small boys don’t think. They plot and kill insects. But I suppose I did it here if anywhere. What did you think about?”

  I looked down, shy, and tried to hand the arrowhead back to him, but he shook his head and closed my fingers over it to indicate that it was mine. I felt myself flush furiously. My mouth raced to keep up with my pulse.

  “Oh, daydreams mostly, about riding black stallions and wearing a ball gown like Cinderella, the kind that would trail behind me when I climbed marble stairs in my palace. But sometimes I just pretended I was making soup. I did that in school, too, sitting at my desk.”

  He chuckled. “Making soup?”

  “Yes. Cutting up potatoes and parsnips and putting them in a pot.”

  “Show me.”

  I laughed, too, and felt silly, unable to look at him. But I showed him, making a chopping motion with one hand against a rock, then pushing imaginary vegetables into an invisible pot. It felt magical somehow with him watching me.

  After a while, without discussing it, we climbed down the rock and walked along the creek to a meadow, where the grass was deep and flecked with grass pinks, blue forget-me-nots, corn cockles, and yellow bird’s-foot like pursed lips.

  “Just like when Pocahontas was here,” he said and spread his arms, his eyes closed, his face tipped up toward the sun. He kept his back to the far side of the stream, where a farmer’s field rose freshly plowed, as if to shut out evidence of our own century. He spread Tim’s jacket for me to sit on in the grass and wildflowers, and he sprawled half-prone beside me, propped on one elbow, plucking grass. He asked about the books I liked the most, my friends, my ponies, my little sister who died. His eyes never left me as I talked.

  I asked about his sheep, and he told me buying them had put his father deep in debt.

  “Poor men should not gamble like that. We may have to marry off my sisters to the highest bidder, but no one comes around for them except old widowers with eight children, and I don’t want that for them. You might marry a farm, but it’s a person you will talk to every day and sleep next to.” Grimacing, he twirled a stalk of grass and threw it away. “Some people have a girl in mind for me, or rather her acreage. As if I could gaze into a bankbook all my days.”

  I supposed he meant my pretty cousin. Uncle Will had set Nick’s brother up on a small farm when he married one of Uncle Will’s daughters, and he might do that for Nick if he married another.

  I kept my eyes down on the grass while I shredded a blade. “And you, what do you want?”

  He let his head drop back so far his hat fell off. “What I want—what I want.”

  Springing to his feet, he took my hand and pulled me up. “What I want is to stay here with you and see every posy in these woods. Then I want the biggest supper basket ever made, so we never have to leave. I don’t think we need a bit of other company. Do we?”

  My dress was dry now, and for the past hour it had been so hot out, even the cicadas had stopped singing. But I was still shivering. A lifetime of girl’s books had taught me what to do. How to Be a Lady—Proper Deportment in Every Trying Situation had said to speak kind words to all and never try to shine, but share in every plan and prospect of your brother’s. Strive for nothing but his pleasure and success. Alone with any other gentleman, avoid all sentimental gestures that might lead to an indelicate response. The only amaranthine flower on earth is virtue, and once crushed it never grows again. Most dangerous of all, should you begin to care, you must not let it show. Be pure and cold until the gentleman is driven wild with need, speaks to your family, acquires your hand, your life, your property, and all has been arranged.

  He took hold of my chin and tipped it up so he could see into my eyes. “Do we?”

  I chuckled nervously but did not look away. “No other company.”

  Chuckling also, he lifted off my hat and dropped it to the grass, the better to kiss my lips.

  HIS LIPS FELT SOFTER than I had ever imagined a man’s could be. Was this what it was like to kiss? I had tried it once when I was about six and forced Tim to participate, up in the hayloft out of sight. It had been wet and revolting, and we had both squirmed away, wiping our mouths. But this was something else, like sugar in my veins. It made my pulse race like a shaken tambourine.

  A clink of metal and a groan of heavy wagon wheels made us stop and turn, as the farmer whose field it was across the stream rode into view on a fat brown horse. Behind him came an ox-drawn wagon and freedmen on foot, who forked manure on the field. The farmer was a cousin of my mother’s, and I swept my hat up, put it on, and lowered the brim as we walked quickly to the woods, where Nick kissed me again.

  But shadows had started slanting low, and it was time to milk the cows. He walked me as far as our lane end, and as we got close to it, he seemed more sober, as if his light and playful self could come out only in the woods.

  He took my elbow. “You know, yesterday I drove my sister to the camps along the river to take the poor fellows some books, and they showed us bullet holes from snipers in their tents. They said horses turn up lame in the morning, when they were fine the night before.”

  I was not sure who I meant to defend, but I felt a need to make it not be true or deliberate. “Maybe they trip on their tethers in the night. Well, I suppose they would, if someone’s shooting near them.” I sighed. “Sentiments do still run pretty high around here.”

  He went silent, his eyes shining as they searched mine. “I wish I could talk to you more oft
en. You understand so much, and almost no one else does.”

  My heart started to gallop in panic—it sounded like the start of a proposal. “I would like to speak with you more often, too. I will be at home any time you call.”

  He looked down, his eyes disappearing behind their screen of lashes. “Yes, I would like to do that, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t get much welcome there.”

  I bit my cheek, knowing he was right, when Richard owned the house I lived in and the food I ate. But how could he not call on me, now that we had kissed? “I’d welcome you.”

  He nodded. “Tell me, cousin, will you study peace with me?”

  Warmth flushed up my neck. “Whatever we can do for peace.”

  FOR SEVERAL DAYS thereafter I was so excited, I could not be trusted with the crockery.

  And my spirits rose even higher a few days later, when Uncle Will presented me with a young mare, so I could ride to Isie’s place and help with Sam. Her coat was pale yellow, and I named her Butter, dug out my old riding suit and sidesaddle, tacked up, and mounted her.

  Her walk was lovely, rhythmical and swinging, and so long as I was in sight of the house, I asked for no more than that, and we moved sedately, ladylike.

  But when we reached the county road, in a fit of high spirits I galloped her west toward Jarrettsville, my skirts streaming behind me as I flashed past the sign that said KINDLY WALK YOUR HORSE THROUGH TOWN.

  I was onto the King’s Road when I heard a shot behind me and slowed, surprised to see the county sheriff standing foursquare and bowlegged in front of the hotel, his pistol pointed to the sky.

  His deep voice bellowed, “Young lady! Come right back here!”

  I was tempted to gallop off, but I knew he might report me to my uncle, who could rescind the gift—so, meekly, I went back. The sheriff was a heavy man of middle height with pockmarked skin, and I knew him by sight. He wore a holster and a chest strap with bullets slid in slots, a broad-brimmed hat pulled low onto his brow, and wheeled spurs. The Colt’s revolver in his hand still smoked, and he blew into the barrel as I approached.

  “That you, Miss Cairnes? Martha Jane?” he asked sternly.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bouldin,” I called gaily. “I’m just so glad to have a horse again. Isn’t she beautiful? My uncle just gave her to me, and this is our first ride. So you see, I was just excited.”

  He tried to go on being stern, but his hands betrayed him, twirling his large mustache. “I should have known. Your father told me you had too much spirit by half. ‘Joie de vivre,’ I think he called it. Said he didn’t know if there would ever be a man brave enough to take you on. Now I think he must have been wrong. I bet plenty of fellows want to try, pretty as you look today.”

  I felt myself flush and tried to simper like one of my flirtatious cousins. “Well, I don’t know about that. But I do promise to be more restrained next time I ride this way.”

  That seemed to satisfy him, and he waved me on as he turned back to the hotel, grinning in a way that meant he was about to tell the tale to all the men in the saloon.

  UNCLE WILL TOOK RICHARD off the farm to look for the equipment he would need to make whiskey, and one hot morning he came back from town and handed me an envelope, addressed in handwriting of bold and graceful loops, suitable to sign a declaration of some kind.

  “Who is this from?” Richard asked, his voice ominous.

  I snatched it, slid it in the pocket of my skirt. “Why, one of my friends.”

  He watched me closely. “Read it to me.”

  Pretending not to hear, I went out the kitchen door. I did not plan to let him know that Nick wrote to me. In fact, I would not even open it just yet so I could look forward to it for a while and make it last. Besides, my mother needed me to help her fumigate the chicken house—she was morbidly afraid of fire and would want water now. Houses often burned on farms where slaves once worked, and she kept water by the hearths and rope ladders under beds. Filling a bucket at the big pump in the yard, I scrambled with it up the lane past the barn.

  My mother crouched beside the chicken coop, dressed in multiple layers of black—black dress, cape, veil, and gloves—though it was sultry out and close. Tim had moved the chickens to another shed, swept the coop, and sealed it and was now crawling beneath it, using tongs to set hot coals on the bare ground. Smoke began to waft into the heavy air, competing with the smells of cow manure and the rottener scent of chicken dung.

  My mother held a black hankie to her mouth and looked up at me. “Really, dear, do stop frowning, it makes lines. Now make yourself useful. There may be sparks.” She gestured toward where smoke drifted out. “Take that water over there and keep an eye on what he’s doing.”

  I lugged the bucket to where I could see Tim setting coals beneath the floor. Smoke poured thick and acrid from the crawlspace, but I heard him chuckling.

  “That you, missy? Watch out now, think I see a lice on you. Better burn that quick.”

  Tongs darted out and swiped a hot coal at my boot, and I heard a high, thin laugh.

  “I do believe I see some fire,” I said and poured cold water on his bony hand.

  Snickering, he yanked it back.

  When he crawled out, I helped him bank dirt around the crawlspace to keep in the smoke. It was a dirty job and took all morning, what with sealing cracks and watching till the coals burned down to ash. At last we carried water up to douse it and wash the coop.

  When we had put new straw in the nests and returned the chickens, it was time to walk into the cornfield and pick ears for dinner. I had to wash and change my clothes before I helped Creolia cut butter into flour for biscuits, fry chicken, boil beans, and slice tomatoes. Creolia retired to her own kitchen in the rear while my mother, Richard, and I ate in the dining room.

  When the dishes were all put away, my mother lying down, and Richard back to work, quiet settled on the farm, even the barn cats sleeping in the sun. I dithered for a while on the front porch, altering my old green dress for Sophie, who was fifteen and as tall as me. But she would have no need of hoops, so I took in the skirt and shortened it.

  Almost without meaning to, I slid the envelope out of my pocket and studied the forceful way he wrote my name, the nib carving the paper, the writing big and curved. Finally I slit the paper with my sewing scissors, as careful as I would have been to cut a bandage off of skin.

  Inside was a single sheet of heavy paper, folded once. It was a drawing of me in a ball gown, with bare shoulders, my long train trailing down a marble staircase. Beneath it was written:

  Show me your thinking place

  There was neither punctuation nor signature. But a honey-suckle bloom lay folded inside it, still fresh. When I pulled the small green tip, the stamen slid out free and gave up its drop of nectar to my lips.

  GRASSHOPPERS PINGED ONTO my sleeves and sprang off as I pushed through corn. The house had a clear view into this field, and I held my skirts in close to keep the stalks from bobbing as I went. Tomatoes had been planted between rows to return minerals to the soil, and when I tripped on a vine, it gave off sweet and spicy scents. Richard and I used to fight in there, pitching overripe tomatoes that splatted on my head and shoulders much more often than on his. Once I enlisted Tim, and we waited hours with a pile of oozing fruit. But Richard was onto us and hid in the house and locked the door, holding his bird rifle, and when I pressed against a window by the door, trying to see in, he put the muzzle to the glass, aiming at my heart. He must have thought it was unloaded when he gazed into my eyes and grinned and snapped the trigger back. Smash, tinkle, shatter went the glass as the ball cut through my dress and skin and pocked a divot in my breastbone.

  The cornfield had a cleared edge, scythed short, filled with morning glories and burrs that clutched my hem. Past it, trees rose, cicadas droning like the sound of sleep. A beech protruded from the wood’s edge with a bent limb—that was where to turn. Pushing through laurel brush, my feet stirred sharp leaf rot. Webs caught my face. I climbed a dry
creek until the brush broke at a clearing spread with red-gold needles and a mound of reddish rocks.

  Gray trunks stood solid as the legs of elephants. They were all bigger than before, and I was not sure which one I used to climb, until I saw a branch snapped off for a foothold, limbs spoked like wagon wheels above. The foothold was now higher off the ground, but when I set one foot against the little stump and blindly jumped, I could catch the limb above. The next was an inch closer and sticky with sap, easy to grip. As a child I used to think God made white pines to climb, the way He had made cows to milk and hens to lay and water to freeze starting at the top. The minister who had taught me for a few years said that all other liquids froze from the bottom up, and if water did that, the whole world would turn to ice and never thaw. He said that proved the earth had been created as a paradise for humankind.

  Since the war it seemed impossible to think like that, but this afternoon did feel a bit like paradise inside this tree. Yellow sun filtered through green as I pulled myself up branch by branch, each one easier to reach. Soon I had climbed thirty, forty, fifty feet above the ground, where the limbs were thin and springy, close together, soft green needles brushing me on all sides. When the trunk began to feel too limber, like it might bend under me, I stopped and felt it sway in a gentle breeze. The ground was just a patch of red gold smaller than my shoe, an eagle’s view, straight down. An army could march through down there and never notice me.

  I would wait to see if Nick stepped into the grove and call to him, and let him be the first to climb up here with me. You are the first, I would say, the way he said to me.

  Braced in a fork, I turned to face the view. Treetops billowed every shade of green, and far off, the red barn stood on its rise behind the white farmhouse, like a toy farm in a train set. In the pasture our five cows stood under an oak and switched their tails. The collie, Rags, shuffled across the lawn and settled in the shade. A wave of sleepiness rolled over me as the cicadas sang.