Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  “We’re still not welcome?” Willow asked. “What part of Farthest House isn’t good for us?”

  Jonah didn’t answer.

  Two bees entered her space, and she took a quick step back, her stomach sinking. Were they attracted to worry and irritation? She had plenty of both. Jonah wasn’t going to talk, the bees refused to move on despite her batting at them, and Prairie threatened to run off. Coming outside had been a bad idea.

  She felt the tiny touch of a bee landing on her hand, she jerked, shook the insect off and swatted at the air as the bee lifted but threatened to land again. “Jonah! Why are they doing this?”

  “Quit dancing.”

  A third and then a fourth orbited her.

  “Are you siccing them on me?”

  His yellowed eyes fixed in her direction, but they looked into the past. “They ain’t acted this way since your mama.”

  A bee touched her neck, and she tried to swat it off, but she felt it roll once under her fingers and then the quick fire of a sting. The bee dropped, and she palmed the pain. “Dammit!” For Prairie’s sake, she managed to keep back a far bloodier scream.

  Jonah leaned the shovel against the shed and turned toward his cabin. “I’ll fix that.”

  The other bees were still bothering. Jonah’s cabin was nearer than Farthest House, and he’d actually extended something of an invitation. Hadn’t he? She hurried after Prairie, grabbed her up, and returned so quickly on Jonah’s slow heels, she almost ran into him. His stiff and laborious walk, full of age-shortened steps, added to her sense of a world grown hopeless. When he stepped through the narrow door of his cabin, a shadow into a shadow, she followed, Prairie on her hip, and pulled the door shut so hard and quick the thin cabin walls shook.

  Absolute darkness. Odors close and strong: boiled onions, cabbage, turnips, raw honey, old work clothes, rotting wood. She feared Prairie would slap pudgy hands over her nose and say, “Ack.”

  Squares of diffused light, like blocks of faint auras, she counted four, made her squint into the darkness to try and understand.

  A harsh bulb above the kitchen sink flashed on, and the long, frayed string Jonah had pulled swung in the air. She looked around, unable to stop herself. Jonah’s place, like his body, looked pared down to a line drawing. If the whole of his wealth was there, she could count his possessions on her fingers: a small table with two unmatched chairs, one wood, one aluminum, a refrigerator, a slouching brown sofa with lighter areas where the fabric pile had been worn away. Through a doorway, a small, unmade bed, a nest really, with its mattress sunken in the middle and looking so lumpy it might have been filled with stones, and an old Bible on an end table. She could imagine the Bible splayed across his bony knees, his shaky hands slowly turning the stained and yellowed pages, his eyes reverent over the words and evoked images. Though the Bible held no fascination for her, she imagined Jonah entering the verses the way she entered her paintings, as if through wickets in hedges.

  He opened the refrigerator with its door as round as a coffin top. With trembling hands, he brought out an egg, cracked it on the side of a cup, let the yolk and white fall in, and scratched at the lining of the empty shell, lifting out a piece of thin membrane the size of his thumbnail.

  The small wooden table butted the wall, and Willow took one chair, keeping Prairie in her lap while Jonah shuffled to her, his chin raised so he could focus on her wound. With fingers she felt wobbling against her skin, he fumbled his egg-membrane remedy over the pain. Instant coolness. For a few seconds, he remained standing at her side, examining his work so closely Willow could have leaned and rested her cheek against his chest. “Thank you,” she said.

  He reached for a porcelain teakettle I’d given him as a Christmas present. Over the decades, the porcelain had chipped so much the original color was nearly lost. He’d kept the pot, though, and I told myself his doing so proved he carried no animosity towards me for what happened later.

  Only a pencil-thin stream of water leaked from the faucet, but he stood at the sink watching the kettle fill. Willow searched for the mysterious lights she’d seen: wisps of eerie moon-colored glow, vague as smoke rings, large, square smoke rings. Her stomach fell. His windows. Each had been covered in a thick tarp-like material and was held tight with a row of nails hammered up and across and down. The shrouding couldn’t be seen through, although in the dark, traces of light seeped in around the edges. She remembered the black, construction-paper rings Sister Dominic Agnes draped around the classroom window, and she had to swallow back a moan of sadness. Who did Jonah fear might look in? Had he been as afraid when Mémé was alive? Did his hiding away have something to do with the long-ago murder Tory told Clay about? Or the graves across the yard?

  The teapot scraped on the stove burner. “The bees don’t mind me,” Jonah said.

  She watched the blue flame licking around the bottom of the kettle.

  “They don’t mind color,” he continued.

  Growing more accustomed to the dim light, Prairie pushed and squirmed to be put down. Willow let her stand on her own feet and then toddle out of reach, cold rushing the tips of Willow’s now-empty fingers. “They mind me,” she said. “What color am I?”

  He stood so close to the stove she wondered that he didn’t feel the heat and step back, but he only turned his body slowly in her direction, looking so stiff he might have been one calcified piece. “Yell-ow,” he said.

  Willow needed a moment. “Yellow?”

  “We’re the same color. Yup. A bad color.”

  Tears threatened her eyes, and she looked to Prairie who walked around slowly, still not touching anything. Jonah had become a cruel old man. Why did she remain sitting there in his worn-out chair, trying to have a conversation?

  “I came here to get safe,” he said. His heavy bottom lip, always partially turned out, glistened with moisture. “I didn’t find safe. The past catches up.”

  Willow was confused. According to Tory, a mob threatened to hang him the same way one hung Willie Brown, but hadn’t Farthest House kept him safe? Wasn’t the garden where he spent his days an Eden?

  “They stung your mama, too. I thought it might have to do with her being like she was.”

  He remained stooped and too close to the stove, his overalls hanging low off his drooping shoulders. Visions of Papa lying in his hospital bed, swathed in bandages, made Willow bite her lip to keep from warning him, treating him like a child. “You mean her being pregnant?”

  He nodded over his teapot. “Ain’t the bees’ fault.”

  “Well, I’m not pregnant, and they still sting me.” Exposed to the air and the warmth of her body, the thin egg membrane was already drying around the edges, pulling back ever so slightly and feeling like a small breath on her neck. “Why keep them? Wouldn’t buying honey be easier?”

  He might not have heard.

  She couldn’t stand watching his nearness to the flame. She stepped up beside him, ready to beat fire from his clothes. “That water is plenty hot for me.”

  He continued to ignore her, waiting until the water boiled hard and steam poured from the mouth of the pot. He turned the stove knob, letting the flame limp away. “My bees come home.” His words slow and thick with emotion. “They come by my door all day long.” His bottom lip went in, reappeared. “They don’t have to hide until dark.” He raised his chin and looked at her through the slits of his overcast eyes. “You never been alone. First your grandma and Papa, and now, a baby and that college man.” He breathed, leaving the names listed in the air. “You ever stick your arm over a hive? Just so you feel something alive on your skin?”

  She walked back to her chair, her emotions sinking further as she remembered Mary and Derrick waiting until dark to knock on her door. She thought, too, of the cockroach a school-aged Jonah wanted to protect and wondered if his staying single was connected to the murder in Omaha. None of which explained why he wanted them away. He’d become crotchety. What would he gain if they left?

&
nbsp; He carried two cups from the rubber dish-drainer beside his sink, banging them down on the table so hard Willow jumped. When she did, he nodded at her, understanding in his otherwise unreadable eyes. “Yup.”

  She watched him move back to the stove for the kettle. He was right and wrong about her. She had ached for touch. After having sex with Derrick, she lay deathly still, needing him to turn and acknowledge her, to reach back across the column of cold space already separating them. She’d felt ugly and unloved, like the slit between her legs was the only acceptable part of her and at the same time the Catholic sin of her? She thought, too, of Mary’s cruel touch, her claw-like finger tracing the protrusion of bone, carving ugly into Willow’s heart. “There was a time, before ‘fancy college man,’ before Prairie, when I could have used bees. Nice bees, that is.”

  Spilling only a bit of the hot water, he filled her cup and then his own. On the table were generic tea bags in a paper box and honey in a mason jar. She thanked the bee that had gotten her to Jonah’s table. “I know you don’t give straight answers,” she said, “but why don’t you want Prairie and me here?”

  He lowered his bone-thin body onto the chair opposite her. She doubted the chair even felt his weight. “Only old folks here, finishing up. Start a life somewhere else.”

  The water in Willow’s cup rippled as she lifted and lowered the tea bag, the auburn stain drifting into the clear water, the fine swirls of color turning it a rich brown. Was she disappointing Jonah the way Tory disappointed Mémé? Marrying herself to a house? Was that what he feared, that she’d hole up, never risking again, forgetting about college or forward dreams? Or were his fears moored in his own past, a man regretting his own marriage to a place and sameness?

  “Most days,” she said, “Farthest House is the only branch keeping my head above water. If you’re telling me to let go of my little hand-hold and reach for a boat, I’m telling you, right now there is no boat.”

  Prairie came to the table, sank against Willow’s legs like touching a base, and then started off again, stepping onto one small rug and then off and onto a second, the rugs soiled and worn to the color of scrub water. From the rugs, she moved down the length of the sofa, her shoulders moving alongside the seat, a palm running over the tatty fabric, as if the texture tickled or spoke.

  Willow sipped her tea. Jonah’s cabin mirrored his body: small, dark, and its eyes closed on the world. No newspapers, no radio—she doubted the old 1940’s box on top of his refrigerator still worked—and no television. What could touch him? After so long, did he still think someone might reopen the murder case? Was she really all that different—shuddering at every flash of a yellow or gold vehicle, certain Mary had come to get Prairie? Clay thought her fears as unreasonable as she thought Jonah’s, but Mary had killed Friar and Papa, and Mary still had the picture she stole of Prairie. Prairie unborn, floating in a sea of blue.

  37

  That night brought little sleep for Willow who tossed with a headache aspirin didn’t reach. Too early the next morning, Prairie jarred her awake, coming into the room and trying to pull herself up onto the bed, only to change her mind when Willow sat up, running for the door as though she could tease Willow into chasing her.

  Willow flopped back down, closing her eyes. She could hear Mable in Prairie’s room and knew the toddler was safe. Just one more blessed moment of rest, she thought, and she’d get up and finish dressing Prairie herself.

  A gentle rain fell on the roof, the kind Mémé called cleansing. Willow moved her heavy feet over the edge of the bed, tested the floor for balance, walked to the window, and slid up the sash. The cool mist on her hot skin felt so delicious she knelt down and leaned in almost to the screen.

  Outside, Tory’s voice speared up from below: angry, several octaves higher than normal.

  Willow tried to hear, leaning in until the wire screen’s grating roughness pressed on her forehead, and she feared it would pop out if she pushed any harder. She could just see Tory and Jonah standing on the wet grass below. The top of Tory’s head was matted, and her wet shoulders made her white blouse transparent over the straps of her bra.

  Water dripped off Jonah’s hat. “Send ‘em home.” Then, a “Yup.” Not easy sounding, but guttural, demanding.

  Willow didn’t have to wonder who them was. His words were a wind that buffeted and stung when he said them to her face, but saying them behind her back, including another person in his disapproval, turned that wind into a gale.

  Couldn’t he see she never wanted to leave, never wanted to go back to the loud and busy streets of Omaha, never back to where the cemeteries held only strangers, to a city filled with so many bad memories and fears? She meant to get well and find a job in Greenburr. She’d rent one of the village’s old Victorian homes where she’d have more than enough space for her easel, where the large rooms full of dark wood played the music of Prairie’s footsteps, where Prairie would have more than enough room to grow, and they could remain close to Mable, Tory, and Clay. She would start at Briarwood.

  Mable walked into the bedroom, Prairie tugging on the yards of her caftan, and Willow jerked back, knocking her head on the window sash as she pulled out. She eased the window down.

  Mable laughed, coming up to the window. “Peeping are we? Fresh air ought to be good for a sick room. Why not keep it open.”

  “I’d better not.”

  She nodded at Willow’s forehead. “Looks like you tried to squeeze through a garlic press.”

  “Very funny.”

  “What’s out there?” Mable looked down and caught sight of Tory, just vanishing inside, and then longer at Jonah, heading for his cabin. She shook her head. “In the rain mind you. He’ll catch his death.”

  “What’s so important they had to talk outside? And why not at least under the portico?”

  “Stubborn, the both of them. She never walks across the garden to him, and he avoids her when he can. He’ll come in if she’s gone,” her voiced trailed, “that is, if I need him for something.”

  “Are you blushing?”

  “No.”

  Willow picked up Prairie, shifting the toddler’s weight from one hip to the other, but her attention stayed on Mable. You are blushing, she thought. “So, you, the two of you?”

  “He’s a good man.”

  “The two of you are in a relationship, aren’t you?”

  “Nonsense.”

  But Mable spoke too quickly and adamantly, actually confirming Willow’s suspicions. “That’s nice,” Willow said. She sat Prairie on the bed and cuddled her. “Wow, I didn’t realize.”

  “Stop it right there.” Mable’s face was still flushed. “Don’t you start trouble over something you know nothing about.”

  “You think I’m going to become the town crier? And anyway, who cares?”

  Mable stepped up to the bed, jerking at the top sheet. “This here’s a small town. There isn’t a place to hide.”

  “I’ll make the bed,” Willow said, “and I’ll stay out of your business, but you answer a question for me. Why doesn’t Jonah want us here?”

  “He worries too much. Imagines trouble everywhere.” She punched pillows and laid them back. “He can’t be blamed.”

  “So, you guys do talk?” Willow was grinning. “I mean more than about tomato harvests.”

  “The world’s full of cruel people, Willow.”

  “I’m not one of them.”

  “If you’re not needing help with Prairie,” she turned to go, “I’ve plenty to do in the kitchen.”

  “Did you know,” Willow asked, “that Jonah came here because of trouble in Omaha?”

  “The murder? He’s innocent, of course.”

  “Tory thinks he did it, doesn’t she?”

  Mable walked back to the window and opened it. Fresh air blew her sleeves against her wide arms. She eyed the patch of lawn where Jonah stood a moment before. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked her. I don’t need to.”

  “In all the years yo
u’ve worked here, you haven’t asked? That’s as strange as their talking in the rain.”

  “Like I said, I’ve never needed to ask. I know what sort of man Jonah is. There’s a lot I don’t ask.”

  The wooden comb Mémé had favored, its teeth as round as infant toes, lay on the dresser, and Willow took it up and sat down on the bed again with Prairie. “Like what?”

  Mable’s brows lifted. “Is it you writing a book now?”

  “You were here the night I was born. Why wasn’t my mother taken to a hospital?”

  “Your dad blamed Dr. Mahoney.” She shrugged. “It’s been twenty years. No one remembers exactly, and who can say the same thing wouldn’t have happened at a hospital.”

  “He never talked about it. He kept so many secrets.”

  Mable slid her hands up the opposite forearms, irritated, but she wasn’t leaving the room. “This family runs on buttoned-up lips.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Those two out there whispering in the rain. The way Tory keeps her bedroom door locked and all her clothing across the hall. She’s had racks moved into that bedroom, and her twenty pairs of black shoes are all laid out.” She let herself grin over her wit and went on. “I suppose, with a house this size, it makes sense to spread out. I do what she wants and stay clear of her room.”

  “Her door is always locked?”

  “For as long as I’ve worked here.”

  “Aren’t you curious about what she’s hiding?”

  “Hiding? It doesn’t mean she’s hiding a thing. Could just be she wants her space left alone, no pesky maid moving things around to dust or fuss over how she keeps it.”

  Prairie twisted away, putting her hands on top of her head to signal ‘no more.’ She stood up on the mattress and began trying to jump.

  “At first, it bothered me,” Mable said, “her being just eighteen when I started and locking her door. I thought she expected I’d steal.” She realized she might be saying too much, but warred with herself. “Luessy always told me, ‘Leave her be.’ So, I did. After Luessy died, Tory was writing my paychecks. I was mighty happy to be kept on. I figure part of my job is leaving her to her privacy. Some people just need to feel a power over one thing.”