A Slant of Light

by Jeffrey Lent

  “Such as what?”

  “I don’t know. Neither do you. But it’s in your pocket if you need it, it comes to that. Could be as simple as needing to buy dinner in town, things don’t work quick as you hope.”

  The boy nodded and then they’d arrived. August wondered if Hopeton had paid the boy or simply offered room and board. Or if the promised funds had been used up some other way, by other people. He wanted to know but also knew this was not the time to ask. So he gave Harlan the money in such a way that it could not be turned down. And noted that Harlan didn’t protest or offer proof of his own ready funds.

  Just as he was about to leave with his wagon and his returned empty crates from his last shipment, a more distant neighbor but a steady man approached August and told him, “The only thing I know about mules is, unlike horses, they get loose from their stalls and get into the oats, the mule will eat only enough to fill hisself, while a horse will eat to founder.” August had wanted to respond that he’d never had a horse get loose, let alone founder, but he only looked down upon the man and smiled and said, “That so?,” before turning his team toward the road home.

  But not before looking back a final time toward the laden boat, the engine thumping now as the drivers gained their head of steam to turn the side-wheel, dark jets of coal smoke emitting periodic and rhythmic from the short stack. And seeing Harlan Davis working alongside the sparse crew, shifting sacks and crates to correct the boat’s balance. The sort of boy he was. August chirped up the horse to roll the wagon home, intent on the work before him but also more comfortable sending the boy off, thinking he was only beginning to know him. And thinking also that Malcolm Hopeton had not made such a bad choice. At least that one time.

  A pair of long, narrow windows was set into one wall high up near the ceiling, obscured by a film of dust and some sort of foliage growth beyond the thick, wavy panes; but nevertheless he’d noted that they faced west, given the low light they emitted until end of day when broad rectangles slowly spread across the basement floor until they finally rose high enough to spread a pale yellow light upon him in his cage. Where, when this happened, he turned away from the light, seeing his own monstrous shadow waver and glide upon the bricks of the foundation, the shadow overlaid by those of the bars of hard steel that surrounded him in this otherwise empty fastness, constructed he could only guess to hold such as himself. The three common cells one floor up where men came and went, some few no doubt spending greater amounts of time than others but alongside other men, those miscreants and swindlers, drunks and thieves, liars and fools, all certain of their innocence. Proclaiming it loud enough time to time so he heard garbled self-witness echo down through the oaken floors that formed above his iron-strapped ceiling.

  It was not that he was grateful for his entombed solitude but only that he’d have murdered those fools if he’d been among them. Idiots so smitten with the base fact of their own existence they’d lie and believe their own truth so told, if it might restore them to their old lives beyond those cages that held them now. As if it, whatever it was, was only a grand misunderstanding, a mistake to be put right if only the right man would hear them. If said enough, surely must be true.

  He was not among them.

  This is how it ends, Malcolm thought. Crouched on a slab of bunk, his chest a great welter of pain, his head throbbing with the pulse of his own lifeblood, eyes unable to focus but all vision rimmed with a scrim of black and red and yet he sat upright, that wretched hard gaze that vibrated throughout him held steady as if upon a far horizon it was his last duty to reach. He did not eat; the plates of food, tin cups of water or bitter coffee, the bowls of morning boiled mush were carried away intact only when some man or another brought the next meal. Even the chamber bucket stood empty. He would void his shit and urine only when they took him forth and stood him upon that peeled raw-wood platform and fitted the rope and sprang the trap to dangle him, feet kicking for the earth he’d finally left forever and then, only then, his body would purge itself, smearing himself with the shit and piss withheld as a debt finally paid.

  The foul man, witnessed.

  He longed for that raw wood, the rope. He twisted upon his finger the slim band of precious metal as he had so many countless days and nights those long months and years of war as if his touch could be felt upon the ring’s twin those hundreds of miles north. Some talisman flowing through the air to the life he’d thought he’d left only behind, thought he’d return to. All ways he’d failed. More than a fool.

  The rope a pale substitute for that ring. His final—no, his only act of contrition. And that a meager one.

  How he’d failed her. How he’d killed her, countless times. And the only one he’d known was that last heedless and irrevocable action of hurling her hard upon the ground.

  He could not claim he did not know what he was doing. These last days he of a sudden started as if from sleep, wet with sweat and stink, his arms sore from that action replayed. Then the freeze over him and his skin goosefleshed and cold. Her dead on the ground.

  The blood flowing from her nose, her mouth. Slow threads, turning black even as he’d watched in the morning sun. Nothing he’d not seen before, countless ways.

  Nothing he’d ever seen.

  He knew what he could have done that morning. But he had not.

  He yearned for the ring of rope.

  There was a scrape upon his forehead that he lifted his hand to time to time. If the crust was hard he’d slide down from the bunk upon his knees and again batter his head against the rough brick flooring. As if scrubbing. Except when he was doing this he otherwise had no memory of this urgency.

  In the upper corner of one of the windows lay a smear of dust-laden webs, new overlaid upon the old. The spider, of medium size, brown-speckled with gray legs, hid in the shadow of the frame until a blue-bottle or smaller fly sought the light late of day and tried to fly through the glass and was ensnared. Then the spider darted out upon its own spun strands and wrapped the fly and retreated with it to the corner. Then edged back out to repair the torn web and wait anew. To eat the fly later. After dark. Malcolm would kill Amos Wheeler a thousand times each day if he only could.

  He waited for, wanted only, oblivion. They had taken his braces, his bootlaces, the bunk was bare of all bedding but for a thin pallet of sailcloth canvas stuffed with cornhusks. To deprive him of his own opportunity, as if he would take it. If he so wanted he could shred his shirt to strips and make do. But he would not. For her. She deserved to have the multitude stand witness to his end. A small offering compared to what failures he’d meted upon her. His own foul mind, his thoughtless mind. What greater crime than thoughtlessness?

  Truly. Do tell.

  None.

  Ever.

  “Mr. Hopeton? Mr. Hopeton, it’s me. Harlan Davis? I come to see you, see what I might do to help.”

  He swung his head low as a bull challenged and saw nothing, the dim cellar a swarm of shadows and speckled bright lights darting to and fro, and, as a bull will, shook his head against uncertainty, swarmed vision, the scent of something known but not certain. His bare feet smacking the floor and then he saw the cringing, frightened boy standing without the cage, the boy’s hands caught before him and wringing them over and together as if he’d wash them clean of what he stood before.

  Malcolm Hopeton stepped and took upright bars of his cell in each hand and roared forth. He made mighty effort to shake the unshakeable steel bars and did not care that only his own body sagged and rose against them, feeling himself moving was enough, that and his voice sounding forth. For sound he did. His eyes upon the pale window far above the boy, he spoke everything he knew, everything he might say and everything he needed to say. There was a great booming within the basement room and some far distant part of him knew it to be his own voice and that same small part took a strange pleasure in that voice of a sudden loosed. His voice rose and fell but mostly he studied the window as he railed and spoke the truth none had sough
t, not even himself until this moment and he knew as he was doing so this would be the last time on this earth he might speak such truth and so a great and terrible agitation filled him as he spent himself.

  Sometime during this the boy fled up the stairs.

  The spider had not moved.

  Harlan forked up hay to August, who built the load, the team walking unguided along the windrow of cured hay, the lines looped over one of the front uprights of the wagon. By the time he’d ridden the mail boat back around to the Four Corners the worst shock of Malcolm Hopeton had subsided, at least enough so he stepped off the boat with wits enough to stop at Malin’s store and buy a handful of soda crackers and wedge of cheese to eat as he loped along up the lanes toward August’s farm; once there, the last thing he wanted was his sister quizzing him. The gentle upward climb along with the food helped still his mind. He paused where the bridge crossed Kedron Brook and knelt to drink and went on, then cut off the road before the house and into the young corn. He already knew his way over the land and so came out into the meadow where August was walking alone, pitching up hay and then whoaing his team to jump aboard and lay his pitches to swathes along the bed—slow work, but a man could make a load in this fashion. An extra fork was twined into the rear uprights and Harlan snatched it free while August had his back turned and called up with his first forkful already in the air, set to land right where it should.

  “I’m back. Let’s make this hay.”

  August turned down a long glance but Harlan was at work and so they went along to the end of the row where the team turned out on the headland and stopped.

  “Were you able to see him?”

  “When I asked, the sheriff only looked at me and told me to go ahead down. He’s in a separate cell alone in the basement.”

  August nodded and said, “How’d that go?”

  Harlan looked up at him then and August saw the stricken eyes of a boy unsure of all the world. Harlan said, “Not so good. Tell you what. Could we just go along here and do this job?”

  August almost told the boy he’d be glad to be an ear, perhaps two minds were better than one alone, and then was wise and simply said, “Why, sure. The load gets high and you want to trade places just say so.”

  “I can pitch it up.”

  “I know it.” He chirped up the team.

  They’d made a full round of the meadow and were most of the way through the next when Harlan, without pause in his labor, spoke.

  “I recall that day in May he walked back upon the farm. I didn’t see him come in; I was out with the mules turning ground but I was expecting him. A telegraph had come the week before and Amos Wheeler went into a panic and within the day they were off—I don’t know where to, maybe Utica. But I knew he was coming and I was doing my best to do what he’d charged me with almost four years before: to look after things. There wasn’t so much to look after then but that wasn’t my fault. Amos had not sold the mules, though I’d guess he’d tried. I’d fall plowed the previous October and so was running a harrow gang over that land, trying to smooth out the furrows to make ready for spring planting. The Bill mule swung his head and I looked and seen Mr. Hopeton walking out from the farmstead toward me. I knew what he’d seen there, what he’d found. And all what was gone. I’d pictured that moment in my mind over and again that last week and was more than a bit frightened but it wasn’t anything like I’d thought. He stood at the end of the field and watched me and waited.

  “Maybe I was a coward, but at the time I felt I was only doing what he’d told me to do and I wanted him to see that. I wanted him to see that at least one thing was as he expected it to be. So I didn’t cut across the field to meet him but kept making my rounds and quartering crossways, doing the job as it was meant to be done, and only pulled up to a stop when the work finally brought me close to him.

  “I set to fix one of the harrow teeth that had got catty-corner while he walked out and stood before the mules and fussed over them. As I worked I tipped my head to look at him and he was the same man had hired me and not the same man at all. Hard and muscled tight from the war and sunburnt dark as if it was July but also faded and shrunk down and he waited until I met his eye.

  “His face was so confused, his voice all broken-up, I just dropped the lines and fell to my knees in the dirt and started to cry. It just came over me and there was no stopping it. And he walked out there and lifted me up and held my elbows and told me it was all right, that he knew none of it was my fault. Then he unhitched the team from the harrow and told me to come along and he drove his mules down to the barn and put em in their pen and we went to the house and there we set and talked. He talked near as much as me, at least it felt that way although once I got going I poured out most everything I’d been holding those last couple a years. Since it was only those years things went so wrong. And he was kind to me, even when he asked about this thing or that thing and even things I’d forgotten until he asked, as if he held a greater inventory after those years away. And I answered best I could even as I saw how it pained him. But like I said, all the time he was kind to me.

  “Which was how it went along, those weeks. Oh, there was times he’d go quiet and gaze off toward nothing I could see, other times he’d set after a day of work and tell me things about the war, and there was times he’d stop whatever job we were doing of a sudden and turn to ask a question. Well, I had to search a moment to understand and then do my best to answer or tell him I just plain did not know but he kept that gentleness all the way along. He never once blamed me for anything or asked why I’d not done anything different or nothing like that. As we went along I got the sense he was pulling a truth out of me, a truth I only barely knew I had. And I guess he certainly was.

  “For the next six weeks we was rebuilding what had been lost, what had been taken. He in his own way, which was his job to do, and me in mine, which was mostly just to help him, be it answering questions or getting seed into the ground. I’d say we was best when we were about the work at hand but I’d have to say there was plenty of evenings sitting and talking when I thought I was helping with that work as well. More than once, end of day as we were headed off to bed he pause me with a hand to my shoulder and thank me. Truth is, I’d been holding my breath a long time until he got home and once he was there I felt I could walk and breathe and work like a normal person once more. It was a blessing, pure and simple, to have him home.”

  When Harlan went silent August looked down and saw the boy standing with his hay fork held sideways in both hands against his thighs. August then looked up and around and saw that they were at the end of the meadow, the load made, the work done. He’d had no idea of how they’d progressed, listening and stacking the load. But the work was done.

  He coughed a hack of chaff and dust, spat it free, and said, “He sounds like a good man.”

  Harlan looked up. He said, “I don’t know. I didn’t know him, today.” He looked away at the raw green stubble of the cut field, at the curve of land below, the slender finger of lake and the rise of the Bluff. At the sky. He said, “He wants to die.”

  He looked then at August as if to confirm he’d been heard.

  August stood upon the load and looked down and waited.

  Harlan said, “I asked him what I could do to help him and he stood hollering at me like a crazy man. It wasn’t nothing like I’d seen from him ever. I didn’t know him.”

  August frowned in thought. Then he said, “Sounds to me perhaps the man doesn’t know himself just now either. I guess I could understand that.”

  Harlan looked off and back again and said, “Let’s get this hay in the barn.”

  Becca Davis had a bounty of garden vegetables laid out on the table with sliced hard sausage and a kettle of freshly boiled small new potatoes, split open and slathered with butter and salt. She also had a hot fire burning in the brick oven set hip-high within the great hearth, and on the drainboard beside the sink she was punching down a bowl of risen bread dough.

/>   She said, “I don’t know how I did it but we run right out of bread so I’m baking this evening. I know it’s hot in here and sorry for it.” She glanced over her shoulder at August and said, “I been more distracted by my brother being here than I thought I was. I’m sorry; it won’t happen again.”

  Mildly August responded, “It’s early still, a warm heel of bread fresh from the oven just before bedtime is a good thought. Are those beets, there?”

  “Boiled to only tender and the best of the cider vinegar over em.”

  “Lord knows, I love a beet. And the cucumbers are plumping up also. I do say, I think we’re well served, here.”

  “You’re kind,” Becca said.

  “He’s honest, is what I think,” Harlan said.

  “You two eat,” she said. And pulled the cracked-open door of the oven and added more wood, which snapped and crackled. “This bread’s rising even as I talk.”

  August was filling his plate and Harlan sat beside him, doing the same, both of them on the far side of the table from the fire, not that it changed a thing:The room was steaming. August said, “I thought if that team of mules can pull I’d borrow a cultivator from my cousin in the morning and Harlan and I could cultivate the young corn. About the last chance, and it’d be a good thing to do.”

  Harlan said, “Those mules work steady. And happy to do so.” Both men eating as if they’d not seen food in days.

  “It’s what I’ve heard. My, Becca. It is hot in here.”

  She looked up and wiped a wet strand from her forehead, a small bead formed on the tip of her nose about to drop into the bowl of dough. She said, “You’ll want bread come the morrow.”

  “I will. And thank you for it.” Then he stood and tipped his cleaned plate into the washbasin set into the sink, pumped water and filled a tin cup and turned back to the room. He looked at Harlan, still eating, and said, “When you finish up, come join me on the porch. Might not be so much cooler but at least the chance for a breath of air to come upon us there. And leave your sister to her work.”